COUNTRY \JJURCH 



f^UI^AL 'AJJ/ELFARE 




Class 

Book /\ : 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



The Country Church and 
Rural Welfare 



Edited by 



THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE 

JNG MEN'S CHR 
ASSOCIATIONS 



OF YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN 



AaBarfattim Itaa 

NEW YORK: 124 East 28th Street 

LONDON: 47 Paternoster Row, E. C. 

1912 










Copyright, 1912, by 

THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF 
YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS 



CCI.A319046 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

INTRODUCTION v 

D. Hunter McAlpin, M. D., Chairman County Work, In- 
ternational Committee of Young Men's Christian Asso- 
ciations. 



IS THE FUNDAMENTAL FUNCTION OF THE RURAL 
CHURCH THEOLOGICAL OR SOCIOLOGICAL— 
Professor G. Walter Fiske, Junior Dean, Oberlin Theo- 
logical Seminary I 

The Church is Fundamentally Social — Rev. Wilbert 
L. Anderson, Pastor First Congregational Church, Am- 
herst, Mass. Salvation and Service — Dr. Warren H. 
Wilson, Superintendent Department of Church and 
Country Life, Presbyterian Board of Home Missions. 
Society the Sum of Its Units — Professor W. Rus- 
sell Collins, D. D., Theological Seminary, Reformed 
Episcopal Church, Philadelphia. How Shall the 
Church Be Related to the Field? — Rev. Paul Martin, 
Registrar and Secretary, Princeton Theological Semi- 
nary. Should Non-Christians Be Chosen as Leaders? — 
Rev. A. O. Pritchard, Village Pastor. Some Things 
That Can Be Done — Rev. J. A. Scheuerle, Pastor 
Second Congregational Church, Hartford, Vt. A 
Teacher That Learned Things — Raymond Spargo. A 
Needy Parish — Professor Edwin L. Earp, Ph. D., Drew 
Theological Seminary. Evangelism Needed — Professor 
A. P. Gesner, Berkeley Divinity School. Theology in 
Action — Rev. James P. Gillespie, Rural Pastor. Elim- • 
ination of the Unfit — Hon. Willet M. Hays, As- y 
sistant Secretary U. S. Department of Agriculture. 
Who Are the Unfit? — Professor A. P. Gesner. Sum- 
ming Up — Professor G. Walter Fiske. Review — Dr. 
Warren H. Wilson. 

II. 

STANDARDS OF RELIGIOUS TEACHING— Professor 
William H. Allison, Dean of Colgate Theological 
Seminary 34 

The Appeal for the Strong Country Minister — Pro- 
fessor Edwin L. Earp. The Smaller Communities 
Are Not Sending Out Men — Rev. Frank A. Smith, 
Pastor First Baptist Church, HaddonHeld, N. J. Dif- 
ficulties in Adjusting Courses — Professor A. S. 
Hobart, Crozer Theological Seminary. Is the Country 
Church Yet a Big Man's Job? — Professor G. C. 
Foley, D. D., Philadelphia Divinity School. Keeping L< 
the Strong Man in the Country — President Kenyon 
L. Butterfield, Massachusetts Agricultural College. 
Need for Practical Courses — Rev. J. A. Scheuerle. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Extension Work — President Kenyon L. Butterfield. 
Country Editor Versus Trained Teacher — Rev. 
Charles Taylor, Rural Pastor. God and Caesar — Pro- 
fessor William H. Allison. Review — Rev. Wilbert L. 
Anderson. 

III. 

THE CHURCH ITSELF— Rev. Matthew B. McNutt, 

Pastor Dupage Presbyterian Church, Plainiield, III. . 62 
The Church Known by Its Fruits — Professor Wil- 
liam H. Allison. Leadership in Varied Activities — 
Rev. Alexander Thompson, Rural Pastor. Need for 
Rural Surveys — Rev. A. S. Clayton, Rural Pastor. 
Surveys Already Made — Dr. Warren H. Wilson. Too 
Many Churches — Rev. A. C. Wyckoff, Rural Pastor. 
Church Union — H,on. Willet M. Hays. Mistaken 1/ 
Rural View of the City — Chancellor Elmer E. Brown, < 
New York University. Training the Children — Pro- 
fessor A. . S. Hobart. Review — Rev. W. A. Dumont, 
Coxsackie, New York. 



IV. 



THE SCHOOL— Hon. Willet M. Hays, Assistant Secretary 

U. S. Department of Agriculture , 88 

Pastor and Country School — Robert W. Veach, Dean of 
Bible Teachers' Training School, New York. The 
Lesson of the Seed — George T. Powell, Agricultural 
Expert, New York. 



THE GRANGE— President Kenyon L. Butterfield, Massa- V 

chusetts Agricultural College 99 

Attitude of the Church Toward the Grange — Dr. 
William H. Allison. The Farmer's Class-Conscious- 
ness — Professor Edwin L. Earp. A Grange Tent — 
Rev. W. B. Sheddan, Assistant Librarian, Princeton 
Theological Seminary. 

VI. 
THE CHURCH AND THE FARMERS' INSTITUTE— 
Hon. John Hamilton, U. S. Department of Agricul- 
ture 113 

Union Ministers' Meetings — Professor G. Walter Fiske. 

VII. 

LEADERSHIP— Albert E. Roberts, County Work Secre- 
tary, International Committee of Young Men's Christian 

Associations 133 

Reaching the Boys — Professor James McConaughy, 
Managing Editor Sunday School World. Leaders in 
Social Study — Professor A. E. Gesner. 

VIII. 

GENERAL REVIEW— Professor E,dwin L. Earp . . .144 
List of Delegates to Country Church Conference . 149 



/ 



INTRODUCTION 

The County Work Department of the In- 
ternational Committee of Young Men's 
Christian Associations consists of a committee 
of business men and five secretaries. We 
have our Secretary Emeritus, Robert Weiden- 
sall. I do not know how we could get 
along without him, because he is the one 
we go to for help at all times. He was the 
founder of County Work. One secretary 
is in charge of the general administration 
of the department. Our Religious Work 
secretary is devoting most of his time to the 
Men and Religion Forward Movement this 
year, so he can hardly be accredited as work- 
ing with us. Our Secretary for Rural Health 
and Recreation is outlining and developing a 
plan for the education of country boys and 
young men along these lines. Besides these 
we have one man giving his time to research 
and editorial work. 

Now there are sixty-eight State and county 
secretaries and several thousand volunteer 



INTRODUCTION 

workers scattered over this broad continent 
who are coming in contact with thousands of 
men and boys and with rural conditions as 
they really exist. These men meet many 
problems and in their effort to solve these 
problems they confer with the State secretar- 
ies and International secretaries, who often 
help to find solutions. Our secretaries visit 
the local fields traveling sometimes 50,000 
miles in a year. We are at times bewildered 
by the very extent of the work. The prob- 
lems cover a wide area and many subjects, and 
the topics are multiplied each year. It 
is for this reason that these papers have 
been collected — to give permanence to the 
words of men who are experts in their line 
that they may shed some light on the 
solution of these problems as they come to 
the International office. We read in the 
papers a great deal about the magnificent 
work being done by the Agricultural Depart- 
ment at Washington. We see as we travel 
through the country, through the West 
especially, the evidences of the expenditure 
of large sums of money. It is an active de- 
partment. They are doing a great deal to 



INTRODUCTION 

spread abroad the knowledge of how to con- 
serve the resources of our land, so far as ag- 
riculture is concerned. 

We see through our towns and our cities, 
especially through the West, where it was 
my privilege to travel this last summer, 
that one of the most conspicuous buildings is 
the schoolhouse; a, large building, modern 
and up-to-date. Now twenty or thirty years 
ago, we used to have school teachers, who, 
as the expression goes, " made failures in 
other things " and had " a little learning," 
and so went out to try it on the farmers' 
children ! 

Today we have scattered through our 
States normal schools and colleges preparing 
people for this field of service, but our secre- 
taries report that although there is a great 
deal done for education and a great deal of 
labor expended in the development of the in- 
dustries, they find little evidence of an effort 
to develop and train men to conserve the 
spiritual side of our country life. We have 
collected in this volume the contributions of 
men representing agricultural schools and 
colleges, and theological seminaries, and also 



INTRODUCTION 

the views of country pastors, all of whom 
have joined in the effort to make clear the 
needs of the country and of the people liv- 
ing in the country and the best way to meet 
these needs so that our secretaries can go out 
and put their shoulder to the wheel and help 
intelligently and effectively. The motto of 
County Work is " Cooperation." We try to 
cooperate with all the things that are good. 
We sometimes cooperate with things that do 
not, in all respects, stand for the best, as, for 
instance, the county fairs and State fairs; but 
we find it easier to turn the tide in the right 
direction by cooperation than by antagonism. 
— D. Hunter Mc Alpin, M. D. 



I 

IS THE FUNDAMENTAL FUNCTION 
OF THE RURAL CHURCH THEO- 
LOGICAL OR SOCIOLOGICAL? 

It certainly is the irony of fate for a theo- 
logical professor to be confronted by a ques- 
tion like this, especially when he is expected 
to say that it is not theological, and put him- 
self out of business. Yet our difficulty is 
mainly a matter of definition. If I were to 
answer this question off-hand, as I answered 
it to myself, when I first read it over, I should 
say, the country church is neither theological 
nor sociological; it is religious. On the 
other hand, if the term theological is broad- 
ened to mean what it ought to mean, then the 
Church's function is both theological and so- 
ciological. If the term social is to apply to 
the full breadth of human nature and its 
needs, then the function of the country church 
is fundamentally sociological. 

I shall propose one statement as a test. I 
believe that the country church must be a 



2 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

community-serving church, not a self-serving 
church. If you apply this principle to all 
these questions you will find that it will 
greatly help. A country church must obey 
Christ's three great social principles — love, 
service and sacrifice. Has the country 
church always done that? We know it has 
not. We know that every country church 
that has succeeded and is succeeding is obey- 
ing these three great laws; and if it is a fail- 
ure, that is because it is not willing to love all 
its neighbors, it is not willing to serve the 
whole community, it is not willing to sacrifice 
for the sake of the community and for the 
sake of the larger interests of the Kingdom 
of Heaven. 

i. "Is the Church a social institution 
under the operation of sociological law?" 
The traditional answer here, I think, would 
be, " No, the Church is a religious rather 
than a social institution." And of course, 
from the traditional viewpoint, the country 
church is quite theological in aim and pur- 
pose, and not sociological at all. I should, 
of course, agree with any one who says 
the Church is a religious institution; 



FUNCTION OF THE RURAL CHURCH 3 

but I should immediately challenge him when 
he says the statement of that fact is an answer 
to this question. The Church is a special 
institution used in the providence of God 
for the regeneration of human souls. But 
that does not mean that it is not a social in- 
stitution too. Any institution in this world 
must be a social institution of course. It has 
to do with men in mutual relations and is 
under the operation of social law, just as all 
institutions must be. The Church as an insti- 
tution can be no exception to this rule. 

2. u Is social regeneration merely the sum 
total of individual regeneration? " This 
question is fundamental to our discussion. 
It involves the definitions of the social gos- 
pel and of " the simple gospel," so-called. 
The people who have not yet seen the social 
vision would answer this question in the tradi- 
tional way, " If you save people individually, 
you will save society " ; and they would doubt- 
less do so conscientiously. If you really save 
the individual, of course you save the lost, 
but there is something more than the sav- 
ing of the individual. Rauschenbusch puts 
it very clearly when he says, " There are two 



4 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

great entities in human life, the human soul 
and the human race, and religion is to save 
both." Yet we have been putting in our 
efforts, as churches, almost wholly to save 
the individual, and letting the social situa- 
tion go by; as if we were living in an indi- 
vidualistic age which needed only the indi- 
vidualistic gospel. Doubtless there are some 
who would say: " Saving the individual is 
all that is essential. If a man really gets 
right with God, he will live in right relations 
both with God and his fellow man. He will 
maintain his Christian character. He will 
serve his community and his generation; and 
the environment will be changed with the 



man." 



Yes, that is the theory. We hope that it 
is true. It is our natural expectation, and we 
take the results for granted. But let us face 
the facts, and we shall often find that they 
do not bear out the assumption. We often 
find that after a revival there is a great 
waste, a great reaction; there is not thorough 
conservation of results. What causes this 
very common experience? It is often due 
to moral gravitation, the down-drag of an 



FUNCTION OF THE RURAL CHURCH 5 

environment that is not redeemed. The re- 
demption of the environment of the soul is 
necessary. The social conditions of our 
cities and villages must be improved to give 
human souls a fair chance to live in the 
light. One great argument, it seems to me, 
for emphasizing social redemption is that 
social redemption is necessary to conserve the 
spiritual results of the " simple gospel itself." 
I believe in evangelism, sane, personal evan- 
gelism; but I believe it is a great pity to al- 
low the results to be lost because you do 
not follow them up meanwhile with the social 
redemption of your city or village. The 
emphasis on social regeneration would seem 
to me to be quite justified, even from the per- 
sonal angle alone. Yet the question is far 
broader than this. The cause of social bet- 
terment rightly claims the support of every 
Christian who prays " Thy Kingdom come." 
We should claim this world for God and re- 
deem it. 

3. "Is there any essential difference be- 
tween cooperation of the Church with hos- 
pitals, orphans' homes, etc., and with granges, 
civic improvement associations, athletic 



6 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

clubs, etc.?" The question is simple, it 
seems to me. If hospitals and orphans' 
homes, etc., are worthy of being coordinated 
with the work of the city churches, in order to 
be consistent, you must grant the same right 
in the country, and must say that country in- 
stitutions have the right to claim that co- 
ordination with the church and the hearty co- 
operation of the church. Otherwise, you 
will give the city a right you are not giving 
to the country. We must claim equal rights 
for both. 

4. " Is an emphasis on the distinctively 
religious function of the country church es- 
sential to its social activities? }) I believe it 
is. I have very little faith in a non-religious 
social movement in the country, whether in 
the open country or the village. I believe 
that we must give a distinctly religious trend 
and aim, purpose and impulse and power to 
all of our social movements in the country. 
You do not need to be afraid of religion 
among country people. They are naturally 
religious. They will take to it, if it com- 
mends itself to them as genuine. Many of 
them distrust sectarianism, however, and 



FUNCTION OF THE RURAL CHURCH 7 

with good reason, for it is the curse of country 
churches. Sectarianism is not religion, it is 
merely selfishness in religion. A real re- 
ligion which makes the world better and 
more brotherly is always welcome in the 
country. 

As I was speaking the other day to an 
audience of men in a city in Canada, many 
of them socialists and the rest anti-socialists, 
I summed up my whole argument here : 
" Christianity must be socialized and social- 
ism must be Christianized." Likewise the 
religion of the country church must be social- 
ized and the sociology of the country church 
must be Christianized. And when you try 
the two together you have a winning gospel 
which is nothing less than the full-orbed so- 
cial gospel of Jesus Christ. No Christian 
should believe so thoroughly and so insist- 
ently in the individual gospel that he cannot 
see the social vision. The individualist is 
right so far as he goes; but his gospel is only 
a hemisphere. I accept all that he accepts 
and more. The social gospel of Jesus is the 
good news of salvation for the individual, 
plus the reorganization of society on the 



8 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

Christian basis. The social gospel is not a 
minor phase of God's Good News. It is 
the whole thing. It is the sphere which in- 
cludes God's great plan both for individuals 
and for the world in which they live. 

Having attempted to answer briefly these 
questions I wish to make five constructive 
suggestions. I believe they are the five ulti- 
mate factors in the problem of the country 
church : 

i. A re-direction, a new socializing of the 
country community, based on a new agricul- 
tural prosperity and a true social spirit. 

2. A leadership adequately trained and 
decently paid. We must have a permanently 
loyal country ministry for life. 

3. Real church cooperation, with local 
federation everywhere and elimination often ; 
ultimately abolishing sectarianism, city luxury 
and social crime. 

4. A broader vision of service for the 
country church, both in function and scope. 
Let it be a community- wide service for com- 
munity building; an unselfish service meeting 
every neglected need. 

5. A vital, masculine lay leadership, dis- 



FUNCTION OF THE RURAL CHURCH 9 

covered, developed and trained. It is 
through the cooperative leadership of lay- 
men, trained to their tasks, that the rural 
church will become able to survive the curse 
of short pastorates and make long ones effect- 
ive. 

There are five persistent and difficult fac- 
tors, which I commend as subjects for con- 
structive discussion. Each of them is a seri- 
ous problem within the problem, like Ezeki- 
el's " wheel within wheels." Many a strong 
church in the country has found its way to 
usefulness by meeting squarely one or more 
of these ultimate issues. The church that 
meets and solves them all will be the model 
country church of the future which will usher 
in the new day when the Open Country shall 
again become a paradise. Even a city man 
must confess that the Garden of Eden is 
strictly rural ! 

— Professor G. Walter Fiske. 



io THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

Discussion 

THE CHURCH IS FUNDAMENTALLY SOCIAL 

There is a prevalent idea that the Chris- 
tian man, having received his knowledge of 
God, goes out into the country community to 
find there what he is to do. Now the Chris- 
tian Church gathers Christian men into it- 
self in order that they may constitute a social 
organization. The Church itself is a social 
institution. It is the central and fundamen- 
tal social institution. It has distinctive social 
functions. It conducts the worship of the 
community. That worship is the gathering 
up of the ideals of the community expressed 
by individuals and further inculcated by the 
teachings of the pulpit. Therefore, we 
do not take the Christian religion and go into 
the community to find what needs improve- 
ment, but the Christian religion organizes it- 
self into a fellowship, a body of like-minded 
men* associated together in a social institu- 
tion. Now a social institution must have 
social functions; it must find its relation to 
the entire life of the community. On the 



FUNCTION OF THE RURAL CHURCH n 

divine side it is of course open to the vision 
of God, and should be full of the presence 
and power of God, but I cannot conceive it 
as not being itself a fundamental social ex- 
pression. — Rev. Wilbert L. Anderson, D. D. 

SALVATION AND SERVICE 

We preachers have been converting people 
and forgetting that the Kingdom is the end. 
I heard of an Irishman who went out on a 
windy day and tried to light his pipe. He 
struck two or three matches and they 
all went out and he only had one more left. 
Then he buried his shoulders in a snow drift 
and struck the last match and lighted his 
pipe and the match still burned — it burned 
and burned and he threw it down on the 
snow and it still burned and it burned clean 
down to the end. Then he looked at his 
pipe and his pipe had gone out. 

— Dr. Warren H. Wilson. 

SOCIETY THE SUM OF ITS UNITS 

It seems to me that individual regenera- 
tion and social regeneration are identical. 
Society is made of units and individuals. 
The regeneration of the individual, being the 



12 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

work of God, accomplishes the regeneration 
of society; and it is all the work of God and 
none of it the work of the Church, except as 
God uses the Church to bring men to a knowl- 
edge of Jesus Christ and the atonement of 
Jesus Christ and His saving power. No 
man can save a man, but God can use a man 
in the process of saving men and social re- 
generation in my mind is the work of God 
saving individuals in multitudes. I do not 
see how you can distinguish the two opera- 
tions as though they were different in char- 
acter. — Dr. W. Russell Collins. 

HOW SHALL THE CHURCH BE RELATED TO 
THE FIELD? 

I have been reading the Life of John 
Frederick Oberlin of Waldersbach. One 
will go far to find a more interesting ex- 
position or a better exemplification of what 
the minister can do for the betterment of 
his country parish, along agricultural, eco- 
nomic, social and educational lines, than in 
this narrative of Oberlin's long life and work 
in the Alsatian Mountains more than a hun- 
dred years ago. 



FUNCTION OF THE RURAL CHURCH 13 

I was a country pastor once in an old- 
fashioned Presbyterian church. I also was 
engaged in library work, club work, play- 
ground promotion and various other socio- 
logical efforts; but my problem was how to 
bring the church and these other things to- 
gether. I could not bring these things to 
bear actively on my church life. Was it 
desirable? We need light not only on the 
question of sociological work in the country 
but on the distinctive relation of the country 
church to social problems. Can the country 
church, as a church, do anything, or can the 
country church only supply with altruistic 
motive the people who will do betterment 
work along various lines as individuals, or 
in association with organizations other than 
the church? — Rev. Paul Martin. 

SHOULD NON-CHRISTIANS BE CHOSEN AS 
LEADERS ? 

I am a radical on the theological side. 
Some one came to me the other day and 
asked me if I did not want a certain man in 
town to have charge of a Boys' Club. The 
proposed leader seldom darkens the door of 



i 4 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

a church, and so far as I know has no public 
religious life. How is that man going to 
lift the boys? Are they going to be lifted 
by their boot straps? Unless the leader can 
stand before his boys as a profound believer 
in Jesus Christ I do not understand his func- 
tion. It seems to me that the social side of 
this question is being emphasized so much 
that we are losing sight of the fact that we 
cannot regenerate society unless we have 
something above ourselves to pull us up. 
Merely organizing clubs and societies in the 
rural community does not necessarily mean 
that boys and girls by coming together in 
groups have higher ideals or better motives. 
We need to inject the Christian spirit and 
ideals into our work. 

Theology is a " speaking concerning God " 

and if we are working for the regeneration 

of the community, I know of no better way to 

do it than to make our work " theological." 

— Arthur O. Prit chard. 

SOME THINGS THAT CAN BE DONE 

The remark has often been made that 
country life is godless. It is, to some extent. 



FUNCTION OF THE RURAL CHURCH 15 

I have had some experience for five and a 
half years in a rural district. How are we 
going to get God into country life? It is 
largely by getting God into every vital con- 
cern of the community. I will give an illus- 
tration. In our town we had a good many 
places that sold liquor illegally, permitted 
gambling, etc. We got a few men together 
and we closed down over twenty-four places. 
We have done other things. We have car- 
ried out some of the suggestions of the rural 
life movement. As a result the men who 
were alienated from the Church and thought 
the Church did not mean much to the 
country, are coming back into the Church 
and they are getting God into their lives. 

Even as to the leader that is not distinctly 
Christian at present, it may be well worth 
while, if he has a good strong character, to 
try him and give him the Boys' Club, and as 
he works with the boys he will begin to 
realize the need of a religious life. We 
tried something in our own county in Ver- 
mont with a man who was not religious at 
all, but was given a definite task to do along 
moral and ethical lines. That man is get- 



16 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

ting interested in the church and is becom- 
ing more and more interested in distinctly re- 
ligious things. 

— Rev. J. A. Scheuerle. 

A TEACHER THAT LEARNED THINGS 

Some one has said that we ought to take 
a man whether he is a believing Christian or 
not and give him a severe trial before mak- 
ing him a leader. That hits me. Two or 
three years ago when our Association was 
contemplated it seemed as if there were no 
leader in the community and I myself was not 
a Christian, but Mr. Pipher prevailed on me 
to do what I could for the boys. We or- 
ganized and for two and a half years we 
went along in a sort of haphazard way. 
The superintendent of our Sunday-school, who 
is a member of the Boys' Work Committee, 
Mr. Rosevear, also enlisted my services in 
the Sunday-school and for about a year I 
was a teacher in the Sunday-school and I 
was teaching the boys something that I knew 
nothing about myself. About six months 
ago in our Sunday-school one afternoon the 
superintendent asked for all the teachers 



FUNCTION OF THE RURAL CHURCH 17 

who were praying for their students to get 
on their feet and I was the only one that 
did not do so, but if he were to ask now I 
should be the first one to get on my feet be- 
cause I now see the light We are organiz- 
ing the boys, over in our community, with the 
help of Mr. Hart, by giving them something 
hard to do and if our boys are going to do 
anything in the community I believe it is 
because we are keeping them busy. Give 
them something to do, something of import- 
ance. Give them a real man's job. We are 
now starting a series of afternoon meetings 
and I believe if we cannot get the young men 
to go to the church we can get them into the 
hall which we rent and if they will not come 
to Christ we will take Christ to them. We 
are enlisting good speakers, men of fire, and 
we are not asking them to come to the 
church. We are having the meetings in the 
hall where they feel they are at liberty to 
come and I believe we are going to do a big 
work in our little community. 

— Raymond Spargo. 



1 8 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 
A NEEDY PARISH 

I come originally from a community where 
theological individualism has been em- 
phasized in revivals until we have folks like 
the man who came to a minister of a certain 
denomination in Boston and asked alms of 
him, claiming to be a member of his denomi- 
nation. In response the minister handed 
him a dollar, saying: "I see you are a 
member of my denomination all right, be- 
cause you have worn your knees out pray- 
ing and the seat of your pants out back- 
sliding." I come from a community where 
that kind of individualism has been empha- 
sized, and I think we have about as many 
sinners there now as we ever had. On one 
of my visits to the home neighborhood, a 
man described a certain local minister as one 
that did not have enough get-up in him to 
eat fried chicken. I made another visit and 
just about the time I reached my brother's 
home, an old neighbor committed suicide. 
He did it because of a lack of income and 
because of general misfortune. There 
was no community agency to give him help 



FUNCTION OF THE RURAL CHURCH 19 

in his isolation and need. At a rural fac- 
tory town, I saw twelve boys playing craps 
in the light of a lantern on the porch of the 
post office and store, and that also showed 
the absence of any social solidarity — the 
kind that would have given those boys better 
training. I visited a farmer who was at one 
time superintendent of a Sunday-school — he 
had held that position for twenty years ; his 
wife lost her reason because of the pressure 
brought about by the lack of money to pay 
the interest on a mortgage. The farm had 
been advertised for sale because of unpaid 
taxes ; there had been drought for three sum- 
mers. That man's situation was due pos- 
sibly to a lack of social solidarity, strong 
enough to help him out of a present diffi- 
culty. 

Later on in the evening a farmer told me 
of a country minister who was so intoxicated 
when he made a pastoral call that he could 
not ask the blessing at table. When he went 
to bed he took the wrong overcoat with him, 
leaving his own which on examination was 
found to contain a flask of whiskey. Now 
that is the situation in a community where 



20 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

we have had this kind of individualism em- 
phasized for a hundred years. We have 
been fumigating the individual instead of 
getting rid of the disease. We need to em- 
phasize both, but we need to do the busi- 
ness of sterlizing the water supply or con- 
trolling it by the community, so that the 
energy a man puts forth in boiling the water 
for himself may be better expended in some 
other economic occupation. 

— Professor Edwin L. Earp. 

EVANGELISM NEEDED 

After having lived for over seventeen 
years in the West I have been amazed on 
my return to the East to find the condition of 
some of the rural districts what they are. 
We need missionaries certainly in the East 
today and perhaps more than we need them 
in the West. The attitude of many men in 
the average rural community is really terrible, 
and I think that while I accept the view of 
Dean Fiske, as of course we all must, so far 
as it regards the need of a better environment 
both physical and moral, there is an even 
greater need of what may be called in a strict 



FUNCTION OF THE RURAL CHURCH 21 

sense the religious and spiritual environment, 
which only the preaching of the Gospel and 
Church 'memberships can supply. In some 
small communities and inland districts, there 
are men who are losing their idea of God; 
consequently there is the greatest possible 
need of a very strong evangelism addressed 
to the individual conscience. Men are los- 
ing their idea of the nature of God, and of 
their relation to God, out of which grows 
the sense of moral duty, the sense of ob- 
ligation. It has brought to me a great 
awakening to come back to the old home 
country here in the East, after living as a 
missionary in the West, to find communities 
going to seed, and men apparently losing 
their idea of God. 

None of us would have this social spirit 
and interest in human betterment, unless we 
had first sat down at the feet of Jesus; and 
if, as a Church, we want to make communi- 
ties better, we cannot afford to neglect the 
individual soul. I am in sympathy with any 
effort to improve the condition of our rural 
communities — better roads, better schools, 
better everything, but I do not believe in the 



23 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

Church abandoning her primary mission. 
— Rev. A. P. Gesner. 



THEOLOGY IN ACTION 

The fundamental problem of the rural 
church is neither sociological nor theological. 
It seems to me that we have been over-em- 
phasizing theology and we can over-empha- 
size sociology. I have found in country 
communities not a non-religious attitude — 
that is, men and women are strictly religious, 
but the religion is not practical. It is not 
Christian in the best sense of the term. A 
great many of the men of the country com- 
munity use the name of God in vain. They 
have a certain theological knowledge of God 
but what they need is to put Christianity into 
practice, to make it a living thing, and if that 
can be done sociologically, then I should say 
the sociological point of view is the right 
view to take. Neither view should be ig- 
nored. On the one hand I feel that in the 
religious services of the church the country 
community needs to get down to practical 
things. Men are intensely interested in prac- 
tical things, for they have to make ends meet 



FUNCTION OF THE RURAL CHURCH 23 

in an economical way. When it comes to 
Christianity we pastors ought to get down 
on our hands and knees, so to speak, man 
with man, showing a personal interest in our 
fellows and helping them to take a personal 
interest in God. Vital Christianity must 
work itself out in the lives of the people. 
And then on the other hand we must take a 
divine Father who knows and loves and cares 
for the common interests of His people right 
into the homes and hearts of men and women 
wherever we find them. Let us be done with 
theorizing and get to realizing and making 
good our Christianity. 

— Rev. James P. Gillespie. 

ELIMINATION OF THE UNFIT 

I wish, in a word, to inject a third ele- 
ment into this scheme of improvement, along 
with converting of the individual and bet- 
tering the surroundings of the individual. 
Following the discovery of Mendel, a Ger- 
man monk, in the field of heredity, the sug- 
gestion has arisen that we consider the elim- 
ination, scientifically and effectively, from the 
network of human heredity of its worst 



24 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

dross, in the form of feeble-mindedness and 
inherited tendency to evil. This would make 
it possible when once accomplished, wholly 
or in part, to have only normal individuals 
to be converted and to be subjected to a 
social environment cleaner, stronger, better 
in every way, in which it would be easier to 
live successfully. — Hon Willet M. Hays. 

WHO ARE THE UNFIT? 

Something should be said, I think, sup- 
plementary to the foregoing. It is also true 
that a man, woman or child who is called 
" feeble-minded " can make religious ad- 
vancement to a certain stage. I happened 
at one time, to be living very near to a 
" feeble-minded " institution in Minnesota, 
and I was very much interested to find there 
that some of these men and women, who 
were really children in mind, were further ad- 
vanced in religion than a great many people 
who possess their full mental capacity, 
and they were attentive listeners to the 
preaching of the gospel. Moreover, some of 
them knew their Bibles a great deal better 
than many normal young men and women 



FUNCTION OF THE RURAL CHURCH 25 

know theirs. There is very often in a " de- 
fective " the possibility of religious develop- 
ment. There is a soul there. There is a re- 
ligious conscious there. 

— Rev. A. P. Gesner. 

SUMMING UP 

I have simply this final suggestion to offer. 
I want the reader to think of the relation of 
a single message of Jesus Christ to the coun- 
try church — especially in view of the fact 
that many country churches are going down, 
all over this country, going down with colors 
flying, dying from exclusive attention to 
preaching, hymn singing and praying, and 
nothing else. The verse that I am thinking 
of is this: " He that humbleth himself shall 
be exalted." The country church that ex- 
alteth itself shall be abased, but the country 
church that humbleth itself in generous, un- 
selfish, sacrificial service of its community 
shall be exalted. 

I have convictions on this question. I be- 
lieve profoundly that until the country church 
does broaden its vision of unselfish service 



26 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

it is on the way to death. Community serv- 
ice of course means an extension of program 
and of effort for many a church, and many 
of the country pastors are avoiding it. They 
fear it because it does mean so much work. 
But it is the opportunity for their own salva- 
tion and the salvation of their church through 
sheer usefulness. It seems to me that they 
ought to welcome the chance. Certainly we 
should rejoice in the fact that we have 
churches and pastors like Mr. McNutt and 
his people who have illustrated this so 
splendidly, and have gained a new success 
and a new vitality in their work by the ap- 
preciation of all the needs of the community. 
I believe that this principle is perfectly sound: 
A church should take an inventory of its 
social surroundings, find out where the 
gaps are in the social structure, and then 
fill the gaps. Let it work indirectly, by in- 
spiration and guidance as far as possible; but 
never shirk its responsibility. 

— Professor G. Walter Fiske. 

Review 

This subject may be reviewed in certain of 



FUNCTION OF THE RURAL CHURCH 27 

its important aspects by considering the fol- 
lowing questions : 

1. Is the church a social institution under 
the operation of the sociological law? 

2. Is social regeneration the sum total of 
individual regeneration? 

3. Is there any essential difference be- 
tween cooperation of the church with hos- 
pitals, orphans' homes and granges, civic im- 
provement associations, athletic clubs, etc.? 

4. Is an emphasis of the distinctively re- 
ligious function of the country church essen- 
tial to its social activities? 

1. In answer to the first question, " Is 
the church a social institution under the oper- 
ation of sociological law? " I call attention 
to the fact that the church is the only insti- 
tution in the country save one, which has 
survived. It has proven its social fitness by 
continued existence in the country, when so 
many of the forms of social and economic 
life have been destroyed by reason of eco- 
nomic pressure and change. 

The church is a social institution, and, like 
all other institutions, subject to the operation 
of natural laws. For instance, the investi- 



28 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

gations made in the Department of Church 
and Country Life have demonstrated that 
the church in the country is delicately re- 
sponsive to the experience of the people in get- 
ting a living. The fact that the church in 
the country is dominated by economic con- 
ditions, shaped by them and in many cases 
destroyed by them, is a sufficient answer, I 
think, to this question. Like all other social 
institutions, the church in the country is at 
the mercy of the people's economic expe- 
rience. This is not to say that the individ- 
ual Christian is so subject, but the church in 
which he is a member is made or is broken by 
the experience of the community in getting 
a living. 

2. Is social regeneration the sum total of 
individual regeneration? Taking the largest 
view of the question, I do not know. The 
word regeneration is used here in two senses. 
For all practical purposes, however, the 
answer is. "No." Individual regeneration 
is effected by the work of God and not 
directly by the work of man at all. Speak- 
ing as a social student, one can only say that 
Christian theologians agree that regeneration 



FUNCTION OF THE RURAL CHURCH 29 

of the individual is an act of God, beyond 
the reach of human intelligence. For that 
reason, telling the gospel story is an easy 
task! The responsibility of saving souls is 
with God; it cannot be transferred to the 
preacher, however faithful. Social regen- 
eration, on the other hand, is the work of 
man. It is man's best approach to the re- 
generation of the soul. We can trace the 
regeneration of a community or of a state 
and weigh its causes; there is nothing mys- 
terious about it. It is a working out of 
natural laws. There is every reason to be- 
lieve that with a little more knowledge our 
ability to analyze the regeneration of such a 
country as Denmark — which has been ac- 
complished in less than sixty years — would 
enable to us to account for every cause and 
to locate every effect as precisely as in a 
chemical reaction. 

3. There is a great difference between 
the cooperation of the church with hospitals 
or orphan hoimes and the cooperation of the 
church with granges, civic associations, ath- 
letic clubs, etc. It is the difference between 
the old static religion and the new dynamic 



3 o THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

religion, which we call social service. A hos- 
pital is for the healing of the sick; an or- 
phanage is an institution to repair the waste 
and stop the destruction of a family. 
Neither of them is calculated to improve the 
human species. At the best, they preserve 
the status of human life, but social and rec- 
reative enterprises like the grange, the county 
Young Men's Christian Association, the vil- 
lage improvement society, the consolidated 
school, are constructive in their character. 
They are intended to improve the species. 
Such work is dynamic rather than static. 
This distinction is vital to all the work we 
are considering. We are undertaking moral 
construction. The close social relations of 
modern life render this possible. So long 
as mankind was dispersed over this wide 
continent and communities were centrifugal, 
owing to the amount of free land and the 
abundance of economic opportunities leading 
men to go out from one another to possess 
and conquer the earth, it was impossible to 
improve mankind. Social service was mere 
rescue work, the saving of the lost and the 
lifting up of the fallen. We are con- 



FUNCTION OF THE RURAL CHURCH 31 

fronted in the Association and in the com- 
mon schools, at their best development, with 
enterprises which are building up the human 
race and improving the species. 

As a partial answer to questions often 
raised, I want to tell about a country church 
in Florida, N. Y. The men's club in that 
church has a large public spirit. It has dis- 
cussed, proposed and effected the lighting of 
the streets of the town. It laid plans for 
the organization of a bank, much needed in 
a prosperous town about half of whose busi- 
ness is done by Polish immigrants. This 
bank, conceived in the Presbyterian Church, 
was brought to life by the cooperation of 
Presbyterians with Polish Catholics. These 
hard-working immigrants realized the value 
for the growing community of a banking in- 
stitution. It is interesting to recall that the 
leader of the men's club which thus served 
the community, was the town blacksmith, 
who had for fifty years shod the horses and 
mended the wagons of the town, and who 
knew every man, horse and dog in a radius 
of ten miles. This man had never been a 
member of the church until the men's club 



32 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

in the old church of the community under- 
took the study of community problems and 
the solution of them. The last three years 
of his life were his best years, in which he 
used his abundant knowledge and social 
sympathy in the service of the church, of 
which he became a member. 

4. In the fourth place, it is my belief 
that emphasis on the distinctively religious 
function of the country church is the most 
essential factor in its social activity. I am 
convinced that the prayer of the individual 
in his own room, and the worship of the 
community in public are vital and are central 
in social service. We do not know every- 
thing. Indeed we do not know much; the 
boundaries of our social knowledge are 
quickly passed. In all this work we are deal- 
ing with a great mystery; but we have enough 
knowledge to discover the working of God 
in the social change about us. We know 
this, that the most divinely inspired insti- 
tution we have is the most sensitive to social 
change and the most responsive to social 
progress — that is, the Church. 

Above all, we must recognize the necessity 



FUNCTION OF THE RURAL CHURCH 33 

for a dynamic spirit, a spirit of power. This 
will come to men chiefly as a result of the 
sense of God. I think it is in part due to 
fear, to dependence and to the desire for the 
satisfaction of common needs. These emo- 
tions arise out of economic experience. 
They are the sources of religious experience, 
that is, of prayer and of worship; and these 
economic experiences, which are the sources 
of social experiences, are also the sources of 
religious feeling. 

If this be true, it is profoundly important 
to keep worship and prayer at the center of 
all social work. This is the reason why I, 
for my part, believe in the Church, and I be- 
lieve not so much in any of these good works 
the Church should do, as I believe in the 
function of worship which is her great task, 
and the ministry of prayer which must be 
the atmosphere of all of her work in all time. 
— Dr. Warren H. Wilson. 



II 

STANDARDS OF RELIGIOUS TEACH- 
ING 

I believe we ought not to be in too great 
a hurry to get at direct results. As dean of 
a theological seminary I am working out as 
well as I can the problem of the education 
of the minister. I feel that there is too 
rauch insistence that the minister shall be 
trained for the specific work which he is 
going to do — that we should take time to 
tell each man exactly how he is to carry on a 
religious conversation with some devout 
woman who is in the midst of trouble. Now 
I do not believe it is worth while to do this, 
if we can, but we ought to carry the student 
through a course of religious thought and re- 
ligious life which will enable him to talk to 
that woman in a helpful way when he is 
actually with her. 

Does " He that would save his life shall 
lose it " apply to the Church as well as to in- 
dividuals? I would say a loud " Amen " to 

34 



STANDARDS OF RELIGIOUS TEACHING 35 

the contention that it does. I believe in the 
universality of ethical law. There has been 
progress in our thought about this moral 
law. New conditions create new relation- 
ships, so we state our thought about morals 
in different ways at different times. There 
is progress in the application of ethical prin- 
ciples. You may read the ethical treatises 
of a hundred years ago and you will not 
find specific teachings concerning your duty 
in some modern situations, as when you are 
standing in the doorway of a crowded trolley 
car; yet there is a chance right there for the 
application of our ethics. 

The country life of today is not just what 
it was twenty-five years ago, but the country 
community itself does not altogether know 
it, nor do the city people, nor do the theo- 
logical professors. We see it in some par- 
ticulars, but it is true in a dozen ways in 
which we do not see it. The country church 
needs to realize that its religion and morality 
can be applied in many new ways, different 
from the ways in vogue twenty-five years 
ago. There is a moral impulse which has 
tome into our social life and which must be 



36 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

brought into the life of the Church, which is 
not merely that of individuals but that of 
the community. 

Our question, whether an ethical principle 
applies to an institution as well as to an in- 
dividual, raises one as to the nature of in- 
stitutions themselves. They are not merely 
aggregations of men, but they are composed 
of men who have come together for certain 
definite purposes. Just as soon as I accept 
membership in any society — and even more 
when I accept an official relationship to that 
society — my responsibility is something 
other than an individual one; and in the 
Church, there is something more than individ- 
ual responsibility. An institution can act 
only with the cooperation of those who con- 
stitute it; but those who compose its member- 
ship have not full liberty of action as 
isolated and unrelated individuals. They 
are limited in their action by the institutional 
life, a fact which it is important for us to 
take into account. So the social and moral 
responsibilities of the Church do not come 
from its status as an impersonal institution, 
nor from duties of the individuals who as an 



STANDARDS OF RELIGIOUS TEACHING 37 

aggregation make up its membership; they 
come rather from an institution which blends 
in with its own corporate functions all those 
operations that manifest the moral, social 
and religious responsibilities of the individ- 
uals who are themselves under the influence 
of the institutional life of the Church. 

— Dean William H. Allison. 

Discussion 

THE APPEAL FOR THE STRONG COUNTRY 
MINISTER 

I am interested in theological education 
and the sociological side in the theological 
seminary; and the problem of standards of 
teaching in reference to the country church 
problem is a very vital one it seems to me. 
One of the questions that came up at an in- 
ter-seminary conference in New Haven was 
that of the sources from which we draw 
ministerial students. It was shown there 
that the majority of men for the ministry 
heretofore have come from the country dis- 
tricts, and that we are having now a falling 
off in members there. It is not only the 
country, however, that is failing to supply 



38 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

its men. We are not drawing from classes 
represented in various industrial groups. 
Now, the standards of teaching with refer- 
ence to the country church will have to do 
with the character of the men who under- 
take the rural church problem. 

I have been through a theological sem- 
inary and have studied others. There has 
been practically no appeal made to strong 
men, who have come out of the country, to 
take up the country church problem as a life 
work. Professor Fiske tells me that he has 
been teaching rural sociology since the be- 
ginning of last year and I hope to do the 
same next year. I believe that, because of 
the popular movement to the large towns and 
cities, there has been a great change in the 
character of the men available for country 
work. Even mothers may hesitate to pray 
that their sons be made ministers on the kind 
of income they are likely to get. I should 
not wish my boy to become a minister of a 
type now common in the country. I met a 
mother in the country the other day who 
said: " I am getting bitter because I have 
more work in my home than I ever had." 



STANDARDS OF RELIGIOUS TEACHING 39 

There were four children — two boys and 
two girls — who are old enough and bright 
enough to help her. The oldest girl had 
just gone away to teach school. Now I say 
religious teaching somewhere ought to in- 
spire somebody to help that mother during 
these years when her age is coming on and 
she has less help in the home than she had 
at any time in her life. I say the Church of 
today should inspire some one in that home 
to help that mother so that some day she will 
at least have a rest, and a better time in 
her home instead of a bigger task in her old 
age. I should like to have something get 
into our theological education — which too 
seldom directs men to the country church — 
to produce a conviction in men that the young 
candidate for country parishes is volunteer- 
ing for a great service, a bigger job for a 
man than almost any field of today. The 
hardest fields the Church has to work are 
the lost home field, and one of them is the 
country district. I think we can educate 
men to develop what I call a social center 
for the Church rather than the circuit system. 
I would illustrate that from one community 



4 o THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

I know about where there is a central church 
with four chapels that would correspond to 
a Methodist circuit. The central life of 
that whole community is in the central church 
where a big congregation assembles every 
Sunday morning. So when a young woman 
gets a new Easter bonnet, or a young man a 
new side-bar buggy, even the motive of dis- 
play can be sanctified and given a religious 
significance. 

— Professor Edwin L. Earp. 

THE SMALLER COMMUNITIES ARE NOT SEND- 
ING OUT MEN 

I am vitally interested in the problem of 
leaders for the country church. In addi- 
tion to my work as a pastor I am secretary 
of an organization known as the New Jersey 
Baptist Educational Society, and for the last 
ten years I have supervised every year the 
training of between thirty and forty young 
men and women who are preparing for re- 
ligious work. Quite recently I went over 
the matter of the character of the community 
which furnished these young people and dis- 
covered that the average country church is 



STANDARDS OF RELIGIOUS TEACHING 41 

not sending out as many men for the ministry 
nor for any other kind of religious work as 
is usually supposed. At this moment I can- 
not recall that the number was above three 
for that period. It is increasingly evident 
that in New Jersey the bulk of the men who 
enter the ministry come from churches in 
communities of between 15,000 and 50,000 
population. If my experience counts for 
anything it would indicate that the country 
churches are not furnishing the same quota 
of ministers that they did half a century or 
less ago. But wherever there is a strong 
vigorous rural church which stands well and 
has evidence of power, possessing real 
strength and gripping the community prob- 
lem, there we find young men who are im- 
pressed with the opportunities that open for 
religious and social service.* 

— Rev. Frank A. Smith. 

DIFFICULTIES IN ADJUSTING COURSES 

I was born in the country, taught in a coun- 
try church, my pastorate began in a rural 

* This situation may be local in view of the fact 
that the percentage of the population living in rural dis- 
tricts is unusually small in New Jersey. 



43 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

church, my friends and relatives are largely 
in such churches, and I spend my summers 
among them. I feel, therefore, that al- 
though I am a professor in a theological 
seminary, I have an interest in our rural 
problem. 

My reply to many of the criticisms of sem- 
inaries is that I do not know of any one of 
them that does not teach Sociology and 
Ethics; I do not know of any in which the 
professors do not get together in deep earn- 
estness to inquire what they can do to fit 
their students for both city and rural work. 
Every seminary in the land has changed its 
curriculum from A to Z in the last ten years, 
adjusting itself to our changing conditions. 

But there are great difficulties that the out- 
sider is quite liable to overlook. We put a 
student through a very well chosen course 
for city life, he goes out into a city pastorate 
and if he has not the sort of timber in him 
to succeed there and drifts into a rural field 
better adapted to his temperament, then all 
his sociology of a special sort is wasted, so 
far as it has any practical application to his 
field. Another man says, " I want to be 



STANDARDS OF RELIGIOUS TEACHING 43 

fitted for rural work." We give him the 
best we can for that work. He goes into 
the country and makes a success. Immedi- 
ately some city church calls him into the city 
and he has the whole problem of the city to 
learn. What we did for him in country 
training must be laid aside. It is no easy 
task for a seminary to adjust a course to a 
student's future needs when no one knows 
where he is to go. 

— Dr. Alvah S. Hobart. 

IS THE COUNTRY CHURCH YET A " BIG MAN'S 
JOB"? 

The hardest word I have heard against 
the theological seminary is entirely deserved. 
I believe that until a very recent period, 
within almost a decade, the seminaries have 
not been aware of their function or their 
opportunity. At the same time I think it 
ought to be recognized that the seminary 
which today does not teach Christian ethics 
and sociology is everywhere admitted to be 
a hopeless back number. 

Now the question has been asked — why 
do not the seminaries engage themselves with 



44 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

this problem and contribute to its solution? 
And the responsibility is laid upon the sem- 
inary. I want to say this one word on be- 
half of the seminary. The professor of pas- 
toral theology on whose shoulders the re- 
sponsibility for this matter would primarily 
rest is not usually a country man. I myself, 
teaching in that department, know nothing 
about the country problem ; but I want to 
know about it. One of the things that has 
interested me is the fact that the question is 
so insistent before the minds of Christian 
workers. They have come to a realization 
of the practical necessity represented by the 
word " cooperation." 

Now take that other idea which is a splen- 
did one in itself — that we should offer this 
country work to our young men as a life 
investment in the way of sacrifice and that 
we believe that this is a " big man's job." 
As the situation is at present it isn't a " big 
man's job " at all. I do not believe that a 
man of parts who might naturally or reason- 
ably be expected to sacrifice his ambition for 
the sake of Christ and of the work in the 
country should be asked to waste his spiritual 



STANDARDS OF RELIGIOUS TEACHING 45 

energy under the conditions of denomina- 
tional rivalries and jealousies which now ex- 
ist. The difficulty lies back of the theo- 
logical seminary, in the competitive character 
of the country work. 

— Rev. G. A. Foley, D. D. 

KEEPING THE STRONG MAN IN THE COUNTRY 

I can appreciate the point of view of those 
men in the theological seminaries who feel 
that the problem of the country church means 
something to them because they realize that 
the country church no longer is the source of 
supply for the clergy that it used to be. I 
sympathize with the idea. But the theo- 
logical seminaries will not take the leadership 
that they ought to have in this country 
church problem so long as they place the 
emphasis on the function of the country 
church in breeding ministers. It is a legit- 
imate function but not the fundamental thing. 
I speak of this because that idea of the 
country as a reservoir for city supply enters 
into so much of our discussion concerning 
the rural problem. We want rural people 
to be good because they are going to the 



46 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

city. But we must remember that the fun- 
damental rural problem is not that of serv- 
ing as a supply of body and of brain for 
the city. That is one of the country's func- 
tions and that partly is why the rural prob- 
lem is a national question. But even more 

— it is a question of the retention of men 
and women of the right sort in the country, 
the building up of the right sort of rural 
institutions for the sake of the people who 
stay and not for the sake of the people who 
go. The trouble with a good many people 

— I think of many clergymen who go into 
the country community — is that they have 
not yet got that point of view. 

The Church Must Hold Up An Ideal It 
is not the first business, or perhaps not 
at all the business of the Church to teach agri- 
culture. However, the leadership in the 
country church ought to appreciate a fact 
that we cannot get away from — that in 
thousands of our rural communities a strong 
church cannot be built up until the economic 
question has been put ahead toward solution. 
In other words we have got to have better 
cattle and corn growing if we are to have 



STANDARDS OF RELIGIOUS TEACHING 47 

better missions and philanthropy or even a 
better church. On the other hand we want 
to remember that, in those rich regions where 
the problem of cattle and corn has been put 
forward to economic success, the work of the 
Church is just as significant and as difficult. 
My main thought is that a part of the task 
of the country church is to give both to the 
poor and to the rich farmers a new concep- 
tion of the fundamental character of their 
work. Now the poor and the rich farmers 
and those who are teaching them better cat- 
tle and corn growing have in mind the 
economic and industrial thought of profit and 
that is all right. But I believe that the 
country church must hold up as an ideal the 
thought that this work of cattle and corn 
growing is not merely, or even first of all, 
a question of profit, but a means of service. 
You may say that is a hazy notion, but it 
represents what has got to be done and it is 
one of the greatest tasks of the Church. If 
the country church cannot do that I do not 
know what else it can do. We must per- 
meate country life, the country institutions, 
with just this one great thought — Christian 



4 8 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

service through the farming business and the 
upbuilding of the community. 

— President Kenyon L. Butterfield. 

NEED FOR PRACTICAL COURSES 

In the country community the Church is 
in a position where its minister can get under 
a hundred per cent of the community job. 
It is a big man's job but the trouble is it has 
not been tackled as a big man's job. The 
rural minister needs practical ideas to take 
home with him into the rural church and 
into the community. At the Amherst Con- 
ference for rural ministers I got more prac- 
tical working ideas in three days for meet- 
ing the vital conditions in my community 
than I did in my theological course in three 
years. I got the religious inspiration from 
my theological course but did not get prac- 
tical ideas for my job. In the county where 
I am at work there are about fifty rural 
ministers. Of these only five or six are un- 
dertaking community extension work, en- 
deavoring to solve their rural problem. 
The others have no idea of what that prob- 
lem is. It seems to me absolutely essential 



STANDARDS OF RELIGIOUS TEACHING 49 

that the theological institutions should in- 
troduce practical rural sociology in their 
courses of study, conferring with those who 
are making great successes along practical 
and definite lines. Then there would be 
more ministers coming from the rural church 
and more ministers going into the rural 
churches. I would voice with all the 
feelings I have the deep need of getting prac- 
tical working ideas into our theological sem- 
inaries for rural districts. 

— Rev. J. A. Scheuerle. 

EXTENSION WORK 

The suggestion that there should be an at- 
tempt to organize study groups or clubs in 
rural communities, to study the community 
problem, struck me as being most valuable. 
The extension work of our state agricultural 
colleges is coming to be fairly well organized 
although it is very new. To date, the chief 
attention has been given to the technical side. 
But there are being organized departments 
of agricultural economics in our agricultural 
colleges and the time is not far distant when 
there will be men at these institutions who 



5 o THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

can map out courses of reading and study 
and who can even give correspondence 
courses and lecture courses along the line of 
community work. All this is part of one of 
the most profound educational movements 
of the time, so far as it relates to our rural 
life. We have extension schools and many 
other schemes which are utilizing the service 
of our agricultural college for technical and 
business ends. In my judgment the next 
great step in our agricultural education is a 
plan which handles the community problem 
in just the same way. Hence the people in 
the rural communities should give more con- 
sistent thought and systematic study to the 
problems of the community as well as to the 
problems of the home and of the farm. 

— President Kenyon L. Butterfield. 

COUNTRY EDITOR VS. TRAINED PREACHER 

At Amherst, I received more from the 
courses of lectures than from the conference. 
The testimony of other ministers there was 
similar. It was generally acknowledged that 
the central difficulty with the country church 
lies in wrong training of the average minis- 



STANDARDS OF RELIGIOUS TEACHING 51 

ter. He is trained for the city. His ideal 
is the city. Everything centers in the city — 
nothing in the country. 

I met a country minister on Broadway and 
the last thing he said to me was that some 
day he expected to land in a New York 
church or to have a field near by. Half a 
dozen country ministers have expressed the 
same sentiment in my hearing recently. 

On returning from the Amherst confer- 
ence, I happened to have a conversation with 
a certain country editor. I realized at once 
that here was a man who saw the community 
as a unit and entered into all its interests, 
good and bad. On the whole he was trying 
to build it up, and had an ideal for it which 
he was trying to l< carve in the marble real." 

"While he was familiar with, all the com- 
munity institutions and their politics and poli- 
cies, and considering carefully the effect of 
all that was going forward, the ministers of 
the place have all felt, probably, that their 
position and understanding was superior to, 
and broader than, his. His education does 
not compare with theirs when it comes to the 
classics and theory, but in practical value as 



52 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

a community leader, he continually outgen- 
erals them all, and initiates, or at least as- 
sists, a good part of what is going on. 

One difficulty with the Church and the 
ministry is that there is a continual insistence 
upon being the leader, instead of a worker 
with the rest of the community institutions 
and their members. So long as this atti- 
tude continues there can be little sympathy 
and understanding and confidence between 
the different factors. There must be a 
democratic, rather than an aristocratic, spirit 
manifested. It is no longer a question of 
finding a few men who have money, but of 
giving everybody a chance to work for the 
great end, namely the Kingdom of God. 

The key to the country church situation is 
the same that Christ used. He looked upon 
every man, institution, activity, or interest 
in the community as an important part of the 
problem, or as means to the great end — the 
Kingdom — the ideal and ultimate com- 
munity. He looked upon a marriage-feast, 
a street incident, the play of children, the 
attitude toward women, the condition of the 
poor, and a thousand other matters, as all 



STANDARDS OF RELIGIOUS TEACHING 53 

having a significant bearing on the main 
problem. He devoted most of His time 
and attention and divine energy to these mat- 
ters which the Church and ministry are too 
apt to look upon as side issues, or by-prod- 
ucts, only distantly related to the problem, 
while he considered them to constitute the 
problem itself, and religious instruction as a 
light upon it. These elements were not in- 
cidental to the Gospel; they were the Gospel. 
— Rev. Charles F. Taylor. 

GOD AND CAESAR 

" Is it essential that the Church should in- 
spire men to better work in cattle and corn 
growing as in missions and philanthropy?" 
This is nothing but the raising of the old 
question as to the distinction between the 
secular and the religious. For convenience 
we may make a distinction between them. 
Yet we remember what Jesus said when they 
brought to Him the question about the trib- 
ute money — how He asked them to show 
Him the penny and then spoke those words 
so pregnant with meaning, " Render unto 



54 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto 
God the things that are God's." Caesar 
stands far above us. We idealize Caesar 
and that which he stands for. Caesar repre- 
sented almost the acme of human thought in 
the direction of human authority — grand- 
eur, majesty, sovereignty. " Render unto 
Caesar the things that are Caesar's." No, 
we have not yet met our human responsibili- 
ties. But is God nothing but a Caesar of a 
little bigger stature? Do we have the rule 
of three here? Do we paraphrase this, 
" The individual is to Caesar as Caesar is to 
God? " Is not an infinite factor introduced 
in the mere mention of God? Is not God 
infinitely above Caesar, though Caesar may 
represent the height of human authority? 
It seems to me, therefore, that we come to 
the essential principle here. Let us do unto 
our fellow men what we ought to do unto 
them. Let us not forget to render unto 
Caesar whatever is his due. But let us also 
remember that there is this religious mes* 
sage, infinitely higher than the first member 
of the parallel, but inseparably connected 
with it. Sociology will never save the 



STANDARDS OF RELIGIOUS TEACHING 55 

world, but when has God withdrawn Him- 
self from the social life of men? 

— Dean William H. Allison. 

Review 

The question of interest here is whether 
Christian teaching by the responsible or- 
ganizations should be widened to include the 
discussion of principles and doctrines pertain- 
ing to those social matters which we all 
agree to be of fundamental importance in 
the rural problem. The question is whether 
the theological seminary, the Christian 
Church, the Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tion and other definitely organized religious 
bodies should broaden their teaching to cover 
economic and social topics. 

1. A new rural community requires re- 
direction and new application of ethical prin- 
ciples. These adjustments cannot be made 
hastily. There must be protracted study and 
experiment, and there is a call for additional 
instruction, in theological seminaries and 
Young Men's Christian Association Train- 
ing Schools, for a better educational use of 
the pulpit and other agencies, including, 



56 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

especially, personal leadership and local or- 
ganizations. 

We are concerned with community re- 
direction, and there must be somewhere an 
intelligent understanding of the problems of 
community life. If anybody is to attempt 
this task, he must do it intelligently and with 
an understanding of the principles involved. 
It is urged that the primary responsibility in 
this, so far as the Christian Church is con- 
cerned, rests upon those who are entrusted 
with the work of training ministers; that the 
responsibility comes in turn to the minister 
in the pulpit; that it belongs also to those 
who give instruction to Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association leaders; and that this teach- 
ing may be continued in classes and by other 
local agencies. 

2. The Church is more than an aggre- 
gation of individuals. It organizes individ- 
uals and federates their powers with special 
reference to the community. There is need 
of a survey of conditions and forces that a 
suitable program may be devised and fol- 
lowed. 

The first proposition deals with the study 



STANDARDS OF RELIGIOUS TEACHING 57 

of these forces and principles for the sake 
of understanding them. This is not specu- 
lative science, it is practical science; but this 
second proposition deals with the same study 
as yet more imperative because there is an 
institution of peculiar power available for 
service in the community. 

3. It is a mistake to estimate rural work 
solely or chiefly from its contribution to the 
universal Church in ministers, recruits, or re- 
sources or from its reenforcement of the 
cities. The rural community must be con- 
served and developed for its own values. 
The church should serve the community, 
making rural life attractive, holding desir- 
able people in the country, and promoting 
the happiness and welfare of all the people 
in every possible way. 

4. While religious truths and duties are 
primary themes of instruction, it is impor- 
tant to apply principles and embody ideals 
in economic and social life, to the end that 
here may be an economic basis for the sup- 
port of the community and a social environ- 
ment that expresses the Christian Gospel. 
Ideals are to be embodied in life. Princi- 



58 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

pies are to be applied in conduct. All this 
requires careful study and at times system- 
atic and faithful instruction. 

5. The Church must learn this new 
mode of service, and it may follow the new 
way in the assurance that churches as well 
as individuals that seem to lose their lives 
in service shall save them. 

The question may arise, Why does this 
economic and social instruction have right- 
ful place in the religious teaching of the 
Church and the organizations that are as- 
sociated with the Church. I think there 
are four simple answers. 

(1.) This new and better human society 
is a society according to the will of God 
and the mind of Jesus Christ, and if the 
Church and these social organizations are 
in the w r orld to do the will of God and to 
bring into reality what is according to the 
mind of Jesus Christ, then here is a great 
task of the Church — a task to be prosecuted 
intelligently, scientifically, and with a wisdom 
that rests upon protracted study. 

(2.) A second reason for this is that 
the Church is concerned with all idealism. 



STANDARDS OF RELIGIOUS TEACHING 59 

This newly directed society is a social ideal, 
and as such it concerns fundamentally the 
Christian Church which conceives everything 
in the terms of idealism. The Christian min- 
ister is not to teach details of a better farming 
and better social organization so much as he 
is to inspire in the hearts of all the people 
the ideal to conduct farming in the best pos- 
sible way, to build homes that shall be the 
finest conceivable, to do all things of a social 
nature in the noblest manner and after the 
highest conceivable pattern. The Christian 
Church lifts all things to that beautiful and 
splendid idealism, and out of that idealism 
of the Church must come the uplift of the 
community. It has been said again and again 
that we cannot do this without the religious 
forces. We cannot, because it is a work of 
idealism, and the fostering, the teaching, the 
developing of Christian ideals is committed 
to the Christian Church. 

(3.) There is, thirdly, a great need, and 
the Christian Church is animated by the gos- 
pel of love. Here are things to be done to 
help people, to add to their happiness, to en- 
rich their life. We conceive the mission of 



6o THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

the Church in the broad outlines of commu- 
nity development, of human welfare, of hu- 
man well-being, of human good. Now what 
is the Christian Church for, if it is not to pro- 
mote human good; and if it is to promote 
human good, how is it to do this unless in- 
struction is systematically given? 

(4.) Last of all there is the urgent and 
moving thought that we are approaching a 
great crisis. We know how the subsidence 
has carried many communities down below 
the line of comfortable living, of honorable 
and dignified social order. We know the 
story of the decadent community, the hope- 
less family, the degraded men and women, 
and we know that all of this is a part of the 
great social and industrial transformation of 
our times. A colossal movement of history 
has brought a crisis to many and many a com- 
munity, and what is the Christian Church for 
except to help humanity — to help all men 
safely through great crises. The Christian 
Church should leap into the gulf of need and 
rescue the interests involved so far as it is 
able. It has given me unspeakable satisfac- 
tion as a Christian minister that the leaders 



STANDARDS OF RELIGIOUS TEACHING 61 

of this new social development, who approach 
the problem from the economic side, have 
called to the Church, asking it to assume the 
responsibility, summoning it to leadership, 
declaring that the Church is the central 
agency, and that it must come to the rescue. 
Shall we not heed the call, and shall we not 
broaden our conception of religious teaching 
in the Church and in the Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association and in all our agencies, until 
we diffuse light and wisdom adequate to the 
solution of these problems in all definite and 
practical ways that can be devised? 

— Rev. Wilbert L. Anderson, D. D. 



Ill 

THE CHURCH ITSELF 

The Church, being a ministering institu- 
tion, and, as Professor Fiske says, " the pri- 
mary agency for human welfare," must 
stand in close relation to every other institu- 
tion that aids in community building. The 
cooperation of the Church with other exist- 
ing agencies for good is desirable and neces- 
sary everywhere, but nowhere more than in 
the country, because owing to the lack of effi- 
cient leadership in the country and the char- 
acteristic slowness of country people to move 
in public enterprises, all rural organization is 
apt to be loose and ineffective. A country 
church, therefore, that is awake to its oppor- 
tunities can be of great service in reviving 
and helping other institutions to discharge 
their functions. 

The chief business of the Church is, of 
course, to spread the gospel of Christ 
throughout the world and to help men live 
the Christian life. Its members are to be 

62 



THE CHURCH ITSELF 63 

11 the light of the world," " the salt of the 
earth." The Church must take the lead in 
giving life the right trend. It must furnish 
spiritual truth, hope and inspiration through 
its teaching and preaching. 

But as Christ " came not to be ministered 
unto but to minister," so has the Church a 
ministering function. It is interested in serv- 
ing and saving the body and mind of man as 
well as the soul. 

The country church can help in many prac- 
tical ways to better community life. Rural 
homes have a great deal to do with com- 
munity making or breaking. The country 
church can cooperate with the rural home by 
teaching it the right relations of family life 
and by helping to preserve these relations. 
It can create a religious atmosphere in the 
home by putting in the hands of the parents 
a workable, daily Bible study and prayer pro- 
gram. Many country families would be 
glad to have daily devotions but do not know 
how to plan them. The pastor and his corps 
of helpers in their house-to-house visitation 
pan hold up right home ideals if they plan 
for it. The country church can help to 



64 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

cultivate in the rural home a taste for good 
literature, pictures and music by putting the 
parents in touch with good books, magazines, 
tracts, pictures, etc. Many rural people do 
not know where or how these things can be 
had, or when they are left to make the selec- 
tions themselves they do not discriminate be- 
tween what is trashy and what good. Much 
can be done for the health of rural homes 
through the rural church, by occasional ser- 
mons on health, hygiene and sanitation. In 
the visitation, too, suggestions may be profi- 
tably made along these lines. In the absence 
of a Board of Health in the country the rural 
church may save its neighborhood from many 
a serious blunder — such as failing to take 
due precautions in cases of contagious dis- 
eases, or bad water, or milk supply. 
Mothers' clubs or child-welfare societies may 
have their meetings in the church parlors — 
instructed by the pastor, the pastor's wife — 
a physician — a nurse — *or other competent 
person. No end of good may come to coun- 
try homes through country mothers instructed 
in this way. If the rural church building is 
a model of neatness and cleanliness — and if 



THE CHURCH ITSELF 65 

the church grounds are beautified by judicious 
planting of trees, shrubs, etc., the homes of 
the parish are apt to follow suit and the 
aesthetic taste will be thus developed, almost 
unconsciously. Sermons along these lines 
would be fruitful of great good. 

Country churches are too little interested 
in the welfare of the rural schools. Chris- 
tians in the country complain bitterly about 
their poor schools, while they have never 
done a thing to better them. Country min- 
isters make the same sorrowful wail and 
leave the country to seek a city church, where 
their children may have the advantages of 
good schools, without ever having preached 
a sermon on better rural schools or offered a 
suggestion to a rural teacher or director. 
The rural church might well be the home of 
teachers' institutes, and directors' conventions. 
The church might well plan great popular 
meetings, addressed by the best educators, 
for the purpose of stimulating and cultivating 
a strong, wholesome sentiment. Graduating 
exercises, school exhibitions and anniversaries 
could be held with great profit in the rural 
church. 



66 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

The country church can cooperate with 
temperance, civic, and other public welfare 
agencies by planning popular temperance and 
patriotic meetings. Frequent sermons should 
be preached on temperance, patriotism and 
good citizenship. Christian men in the 
country should be urged to attend all the pri- 
maries and elections, and to vote for men of 
principle rather than for party. Citizens 
everywhere should be urged to study the pub- 
lic issues of the day and to be well informed 
on them. The country church may well put 
its constituency in touch with literature on 
this subject. There is no more effective way 
to cooperate in securing good, clean, effec- 
tive government — local, county, state or na- 
tional. The farmers as a rule do not know 
half enough about civil government and as a 
result of this they have not a sufficient repre- 
sentation in the government administration. 
The Church can thus cooperate not only in 
securing civic righteousness, but when occa- 
sion demands, it can also rebuke political cor- 
ruption and all sorts of evil social and moral 
practices. 

The country church can cooperate in the 



THE CHURCH ITSELF 67 

social uplift of the rural community by be- 
coming the center of all social activities. 
There can be no better place from which the 
social life of a small neighborhood may 
emanate. The church edifice should be well 
equipped for work of this kind. Every rural 
social gathering should be carefully planned 
with a definite purpose in view. There will 
be no monotony if this rule is followed and 
every sociable will be stimulating and help- 
ful. The country church may plan suitable 
entertainments where there is need for such 
work. A good lecture course may be con- 
ducted by a country church to great advan- 
tage. Along with this indoor social and rec- 
reational equipment the rural church may 
establish a recreation park — provided with 
baseball diamonds, tennis courts, croquet 
grounds, race course, swings, and grand- 
stand — where a whole community may come 
for a good time on Saturday afternoons, 
Fourth of Julys, field days and play festival 
days. An investment in an enterprise like 
this will pay large dividends. It is far and 
away ahead of allowing the young people to 
drive off to towns and public amusement 



68 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

parks and pay for commercialized amuse- 
ment that often has the sting of death in it. 

The community pride and the friendships 
and companionships growing up in and 
through the activities of the country com- 
munity play park are sweet and lasting and 
there is wondrous saving power in them. 
How many country preachers have ever 
preached on play? The country people have 
not yet rightly learned to play together. 
They have not learned the value of play. 
The young farmer goes wrong, not while he 
is following the plow, but after the day's 
work is over and he puts on his best clothes 
and goes out for his sport. Then is when he 
most needs a place to go where he can have 
his fun and not be contaminated. 

The country church is, of course, interested 
in better farming. It can cooperate with 
the farmer in securing better agricultural 
conditions and facilities, by interpreting to 
him what the new agriculture is and what it 
will do for him. The country minister 
should be in close touch with the agricultural 
college of his state and with the Department 
of Agriculture at Washington, D. C. He 



THE CHURCH ITSELF 69 

need not necessarily be a master of the sci- 
ence nor need he attempt to teach it. But 
he ought to be informed on what is being 
done in the Experiment stations and he ought 
to know about the many helpful bulletins, 
and other publications that are issued for 
farmers and how to get them. He can pave 
the way for the use of this literature in his 
parish by referring to it frequently as he has 
opportunity. He can read and digest some 
of the most helpful of these farmers' bulle- 
tins. He may find good sermon illustra- 
tions here. The country minister may in- 
spire boys' corn clubs and contests and farm- 
ers' institutes. The church may well open its 
doors to such clubs and institutes when there 
is no other suitable place to hold them. One 
country church, through its Young Men's 
Bible Class, has started a library which is 
kept in the lecture room of the church. 
Books pertaining to agriculture and country 
life are being put in this country life library. 
The country church loses nothing by showing 
its interest in the farmers' material pros- 
perity. It is the fairer way. The country 
minister is fairer when he shows his sympa- 



7 o THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

thy for the farmer in his struggle for a living. 
And it will not make him a whit the less faith- 
ful and efficient as a preacher of the Gospel. 
He should be very careful, however, in do- 
ing this, to leave the impression that better 
farming is to mean better homes, better 
schools — better churches, better living con- 
ditions — and not " more money to buy 
more land to raise more corn to feed more 
hogs to get more money." 

Certain things need to be done for people 

— must be done. Every country community 
needs certain things to be done in it and for 
it. The Church — being " the primary 
agency for human welfare " — is ultimately 
responsible for supplying human needs. For 
instance, if there is no Board of Health in 
a country community — active or otherwise 

— the church must look after the health of 
the people or cause it to be done — until such 
board can be revived or established. If 
the country school is deficient, the country 
church must do much educational work until 
the school is improved — that the intellec- 
tual life of the community may not further 
degenerate. 



THE CHURCH ITSELF 71 

A number of country churches today are 
performing service that properly belongs to 
the home, grange, school, or other institu- 
tion because these institutions are very weak 
or temporarily out of commission. The 
country churches that are rendering this 
needed service are the ones that are succeed- 
ing best. 

— Rev. M. B. McNutt. 

Discussion 

THE CHURCH KNOWN BY ITS FRUITS 

The church that realizes its true mission, 
and at the same time can go about that mis- 
sion without conveying the idea that it is 
something apart from the community itself, 
will be the most efficient church in the coun- 
try community or in any other community. 
There is a special opportunity for the coun- 
try church to identify itself with the com- 
munity, as such, that the city church very of- 
ten does not have. We must for conven- 
ience divide up the functions in any community 
and we must think of certain functions as be- 
longing particularly to certain institutions; 



72 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

but the church must realize that while it has 
a specific function, it is one which strikes at 
the very life of men and the very life of the 
community itself. If the church can remem- 
ber this, it need not fear that it is going to 
lower its level and appear to the community 
as being simply one among several organiza- 
tions of equal worth. On the other hand, 
if the church goes about in the community 
all the time announcing the fact, proclaiming 
from the house-tops that it is not as the 
other institutions of men — if it is necessary 
for the church to proclaim that, I think we 
may expect that the church will lose its influ- 
ence and it ought to lose it. It is not the 
man who goes about saying " I am a Chris- 
tian and I am better than the people who are 
not Christians and I am to have special privi- 
leges and special opportunities because I am 
a Christian " who makes the real impression 
on the life of the community in which he is 
living. It is all right for us of course to 
testify for Christ, to bear witness to the fact 
that we do believe in Him; but after all, there 
is a sense in which it ought to be unnecessary 
through word of mouth, because the life 



THE CHURCH ITSELF 73 

which we live always speaks louder than the 
life which we talk about and the former ought 
to be sufficient testimony in itself. So the 
church which realizes that it has a specific 
task, which does not lose its main purpose, 
but which at the same time can escape the 
danger of putting itself into the community 
as something apart from the community, will 
be the most efficient church. 

— Dr. William H. Allison. 

LEADERSHIP IN VARIED ACTIVITIES 

The personal element is the one that en- 
ters most strongly into the question of lead- 
ership in the country church. It so happens 
that I have the honor to be the pastor of one 
of the three largest rural churches in the 
Presbyterian denomination. Because my 
people find it easier to attend church in the 
summer, I plan to take my vacation in the 
fall. In order that I may keep young I have 
been coaching a college football team for a 
couple of weeks. 

The people in the parish to which I was 
sent appeared to have lost all sense of the 
practice of the presence of God. Though 



74 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

the county was famed for the value of its 
products, though the people were rich, yet 
they had to be brought to God. Our men's 
Bible class now has a membership of ninety, 
with an average attendance of perhaps forty. 
We have organized a choral society with forty 
or more members. The stereopticon is a 
valuable adjunct to the work. I use it the 
third Sunday night of every month. It is a 
mighty educator along missionary lines. 

Amid great opposition we have placed a 
fine pipe organ in the church. There is no 
denominational rivalry. We have a few 
Quaker meeting houses. The young Quak- 
ers are rapidly being taken in hand by my 
church. Hicksite Quakers make fine Pres- 
byterians. It was necessary to eliminate cer- 
tain organizations which had been pestering 
the life of the church. The work in respect 
to the young men and the young women is 
carried on along constructive lines. But it 
is not by studying rural sociology alone that 
you can solve the problems of the rural 
church. .You must see God first of all. 
— Rev. Alexander Thompson. 



THE CHURCH ITSELF 75 

NEED FOR RURAL SURVEYS 

I have been endeavoring for something 
like a year past to obtain a method that will 
enable one to get accurate information with 
regard to the economic and social life of the 
community. Until we obtain this informa- 
tion I do not see how we can advance very 
far or very rapidly. 

I desire to obtain a method that will cover 
different church communities. There is the 
church located in the open country, the church 
in the country village, which is generally over- 
churched, or a combination of the two. The 
area of the community may be forty or fifty 
or more square miles with various local cen- 
ters of characteristic individuality. How are 
you going to get your data in such a situation? 
I should like to get some idea how we are 
going to get at the situation. 

— Rev. A. S. Clayton. 

SURVEYS ALREADY MADE 

The Department of Church and Country 
Life of the Presbyterian Board of Home 
Missions, in which I work, is undertaking the 



76 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

task of sociological survey of country com- 
munities with the utmost care and thorough- 
ness. We publish, about the first of the year, 
four monographs giving the results of such 
surveys in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois and 
Missouri, and we have further work in Ten- 
nessee and Kentucky and other Southern 
States now in process. 

We have also worked out the materials 
and plans for community study and we shall 
be glad to furnish them to any one desiring 
them. This work is all done in such a way 
as to serve workers of any denomination. 
The Department is undertaking precisely the 
work which Professor Earp has described in 
a section of Missouri, where, among forty 
of our churches, we expect to apply the princi- 
ples already stated. 

— Dr. Warren H. Wilson. 

TOO MANY CHURCHES 

The problem of the church in the small 
town, where there are more churches than 
one, differs from that of the distinctly rural 
church. The difficulty of the town church is 
not the lack of wide-awake, aggressive, 



THE CHURCH ITSELF 77 

modern, efficient leadership. Men of this 
type are already upon the field. They are 
thoroughly in touch with modern methods, 
and appreciate the real needs of the locality. 
They are eager, and ready to approach the 
religious problems of the town from a com- 
munity standpoint. The difficulty is one of 
operation. In every such town there are 
from one to five churches already established. 
These churches, save the first, have not been 
organized primarily because a careful study 
of the community needs seemed to demand 
their existence, but they have been organized 
because of differences of opinion, which have 
occasioned splits in churches that were exist- 
ing, or because denominational zeal spied 
a chance to get a foothold for a particular 
church. Once upon the field, they must be 
maintained, even though the real religious 
efficiency of the true Church of God be made 
to suffer thereby. 

No man can come into such communities 
and attempt to do community-wide religious 
work, without finding himself face to face 
with conditions which make his work impos- 
sible. Until the emphasis in all such re- 



78 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

ligious activity is changed from " my church " 
and " my denomination," to my community, 
the real religious problem of the small town 
cannot be successfully solved. 

— Rev. A. C. Wyckofi. 

CHURCH UNION 

Suppose that in Montgomery County, 
Maryland, or in some county in Iowa, thirty 
pastors of the forty churches be brought to- 
gether, with a man and a woman from each 
congregation, making a total of no; and 
that these be formed into a country church 
federation for the purpose of allowing any 
community desiring to do so to unify its 
churches through this federation, which 
might serve — as the business man would 
say — as a holding body. Let the local 
rural union church through this body have 
its ecclesiastical relation to the other church 
without becoming a denomination. I find 
that, in many communities, churches started 
as union churches have become denomina- 
tional. Cannot we form a county church 
federation and then ask the state bodies or 
the national bodies to invest them with all 



THE CHURCH ITSELF 79 

ecclesiastical authority of all the churches 
represented, and in that way provide that the 
members retain their denominational relation- 
ship and have a common church home in the 
community, where all can work? I am sim- 
ply suggesting this, as the basis of a plan to 
overcome the present difficulties of a divided 
rural church. 

— Hon. Willet M. Hays. 

MISTAKEN RURAL VIEWS OF THE CITY 

When I hear talk about rural communities 
and religious work in rural communities, I 
find myself going back to certain plowed 
fields away out in Illinois and remembering 
exactly how the mud used to stick to my shoes 
when I tramped over those fields; and I re- 
tall particularly the time when I had the 
honor of picking up what was, I believe, the 
first so-called corresponding member of the 
Young Men's Christian Associations, whom 
I found in the farthest corner of a far-off 
farm. 

My work just now is in the city. It seems 
to me that it is of a good deal of importance 
that we should take definite steps to help the 



8o THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

city and the country understand one another 
and particularly to help the country boy at 
his best to understand the city boy at his best. 
The country boy very often goes to town with 
a feeling that he is going to find there those 
who are interested in a gay life or those who 
are interested in making money; but it does 
not ordinarily occur to him that he is going 
to find those who have high spiritual ideals. 
I have seen country boys come up to 
town and find there a lot of fellows, gathered 
in a Young Men's Christian Association, 
whose ideals were higher than those he knew 
in the country. I believe it is a good thing 
for the city boys in the Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association to get out once in a while 
and meet those country boys and find out 
what the open air idea of life is. This move- 
ment in both its educational aspect and its re- 
ligious aspect is to my mind one of the ex- 
traordinarily interesting features of this pres- 
ent time, and a thing that the men of the cities 
have reason to be interested in as much as the 
men of the country. 

— Chancellor Elmer E. Brown. 



THE CHURCH ITSELF 81 

TRAINING THE CHILDREN 

Much is said about the churches' duty to 
the community. It is just as natural for 
every Christian to feel interest in his com- 
munity as it is for him to pray. There never 
was a Christian man who read his Bible 
enough to be a Sunday-school teacher that did 
not believe in his soul that he has a duty to 
the community. We need no enforcement of 
that matter. But how shall we do the needed 
thing for that community? The old- 
fashioned way was to wait for a special ex- 
perience called conversion, so marked that 
we could date it. But we are coming to see 
that the training of children has more im- 
portance than we used to think it had. We 
are learning that it is quite necessary and 
quite possible to do something that will help 
in large measure to predetermine the time 
and character of the reception our children 
will give to the Gospel when they come to 
years of personal decision. The environ- 
ment is important. 

Another matter to be noted is that we have 
all changed our notions about the Kingdom 



82 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

of God. I take it that when Jesus told us 
to pray " Thy Kingdom come in earth," He 
knew what He was talking about. We were 
brought up to think of the Kingdom as some- 
thing waiting for us when we die. But I 
have come, and others who have not already 
done so will be forced to come, to the con- 
clusion that the Kingdom, so far as we can 
do anything about it, is to be actually realized 
in earth. That is, kindness and equality and 
mutual helpfulness in a spirit of love consti- 
tutes the Kingdom here and now. It grows 
upon me that we may safely let Heaven take 
care of itself. We may put away the idea 
that earth is simply a hatchery for young fish 
and they are to be removed to their proper 
habitat as soon as they can swim well. We 
shall be nearer the truth if we consider the 
matter in the light of a field of corn. The 
thing to do in June is to hoe the corn. That 
is all we can do. It is not time for harvests. 
When the harvest comes we will gather it. 
Just now is the hoeing time for the Kingdom 
of God. It is not completed and cannot be 
now. We must look ahead for some things 
that earth cannot give us. But we are to 



THE CHURCH ITSELF 83 

look out now for human society. We are 
to do the kind and wise things for this life, 
and the next will be safe enough. 

— Dr. Alvah S. Hobart. 

Review 

I will state some convictions resulting from 
experience as pastor of a country church for 
twenty-three years. We are coming to 
realize that the problem we are facing is not 
only a country church problem, it is a great 
religious problem of which that is a part. 
There is a problem in the city as in the coun- 
try — the problem of indifference and irre- 
ligion — quite as acute in the city as in the 
country. Churches in some sections of the 
city are going down the same as in the coun- 
try. Federation is needed in some instances 
in the city as well as in the country. 

We need to keep in mind that the decline 
of religious interest is not so great over the 
whole country as that found in some commu- 
nities. Often this is forgotten in speaking 
of certain sections. They are only a small 
part. We are in need of more information. 
We are generalizing without sufficient data. 



84 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

Let us have more surveys carefully made. 

Some readers, seeking specific suggestions 
for local needs, will be disappointed, but a 
new view-point is the great need in the coun- 
try. To most of us has come a realization 
that conditions in the country are not hope- 
less. Much written in our papers and maga- 
zines on religious life in the country districts 
contains a depressing note. This is unfor- 
tunate, for the impression is given to the 
faithful workers still there that things are 
going from bad to worse. Rather should we 
inspire confidence and hope and encourage 
such workers to labor for the improvement 
of present conditions by introducing a few 
new agencies. 

In the country the view-point of coopera- 
tion is needed. This is lacking in many sec- 
tions. It is each one for himself. That is 
due in part to isolation, in part to old meth- 
ods. Here the minister with a new view- 
point can exert great influence. I speak 
from experience. By visiting the schools of 
all the districts in his parish, he can talk with 
the teacher and pupils, learn conditions and 
plan with the teacher of each district for im- 



THE CHURCH ITSELF 85 

provement in that district. Together the 
pastor and teacher can give new ideals to the 
people. 

To accomplish this calls for country pastors 
with a vision. It has been said that few 
country pastors have the new view-point. If 
that be true, what is to be done for them? 
Two things. First, the young men in prep- 
aration for the ministry can be given this 
view-point in the seminary, and the teachers 
there can equip and send out the men for a 
broader and more varied service to the com- 
munity. Secondly, for those now in the min- 
istry let us have institutes modeled after the 
farmers' institute, or the institute conducted 
by the Department of Education to benefit the 
district school teachers, or those conducted 
by our Sunday-school associations for the 
awakening of the Sunday-school workers. 
If the pastors of all denominations could be 
brought together and experts on country 
church work could conduct such an institute 
once a year in each county, much help might 
be given. Not methods, but the new view- 
point, must be made prominent. Hold be- 
fore the minds of these pastors the great work 



86 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

possible for them, until they rise up and go 
forth with fresh courage. Many country 
pastors are discouraged and seek change be- 
cause they have not grasped the possibilities 
for service in their fields. 

Again we must lay emphasis on the Re- 
ligious motive. Dean Bailey emphasizes the 
fact that the soil is holy, and the farmer is 
in a religious work. Is this not true also 
for the artisan — for the man working with 
his plane? Is he not working with things 
holy in the same sense? We should lead 
people to see that every occupation has an 
ethical and religious side as well as an eco- 
nomic. 

All our discussion will not help us or 
others, until we realize, first of all, that the 
leaders must be filled with the Spirit of God. 
There is one who baptizes with the Spirit 
and fire. When that fire comes into the soul 

— the fire of love and devotion and intensity 

— the man will put the spirit of enthusiasm 
into methods already in use. 

The work of the County Department of 
the Young Men's Christian Association is to 
raise up leaders in country districts, and great 



THE CHURCH ITSELF 87 

blessings have come to many communities 
through the introduction of the county work. 
Not the least blessing has been the new vision 
given to many a pastor. There may not be 
as much glory associated with the county 
work as with the city work, but it is just as 
important for upbuilding the Kingdom of our 
Lord. We pastors need these country work- 
ers to come and stand by us and work with 
us. May such workers be multiplied. 

Let us pray more. Both country and city 
need our prayers. The message of the hour 
is, " The harvest truly is plenteous, but the 
laborers are few. Pray ye therefore the 
Lord of the harvest that he will send forth 
laborers into his harvest." 

Men sometimes lay hands on and ordain 
to the ministry those not chosen and an- 
nointed of God. Let us pray that every one 
sent out be annointed with God's Spirit, and 
then the work will prosper in every field. 
— Rev. William A. Dumont. 



IV 

THE SCHOOL 

This is a time of organization, not only 
in our great financial affairs, but we seem 
to be on the eve, through arbitration and 
other plans, of bringing about some kind of 
a peaceful world-organization that will do 
away with war. And the time has come 
when we should apply these principles, in the 
largest sense, to a general get-together move- 
ment, doing away with our denominational 
differences so that we can unify our church 
life in the open country, in the villages, and 
in the cities. We are weak and ridiculous 
in the eyes of the world because we do not 
have some plan of getting together. If I 
can do but one thing, that is, give a hope that 
a plan made by somebody at some time in 
the near future may be originated that will 
start the coordinating of our forces, the be- 
littling of our differences and the enlargement 
of our minds for a more unified and better 
organized structure for doing our human 

88 



THE SCHOOL 89 

part of the work of Christianity — if I can 
give an impulse along that line, even though 
I make no suggestion myself that is practical, 
I shall have accomplished my larger purpose. 
Our religious schools, our denominational 
schools as we call them, should get into a 
position to give religious impulses not to one 
student in a long course, but to all of our 
youth during one or two years of their school 
life. In other words our denominational 
schools, whose principal object in the hearts 
of those who founded them was to prepare 
ministers and teachers and through them 
build up character in the whole people, should 
adhere to the complete purpose of their found- 
ers. They should not only prepare minis- 
terial leaders but they should in some way re- 
enter the field to produce teachers, not allow- 
ing the public normal schools to crowd the 
church schools out of this work. As some 
one has expressed it, we should use these 
schools to put in the heart of every one who 
is to be a teacher in our public schools, or 
a lay-leader in the community, religious 
impulses toward altruistic service and char- 
acter building. I have been a student in two 



9 o THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

denominational schools and in one state 
agricultural college, and a teacher in two ag- 
ricultural colleges and I know there is oppor- 
tunity in our denominational schools to exert 
a great power along character-building lines. 
We are not using to good advantage our 
opportunities. We ought so to change the 
plans and purposes of our denominational 
schools that the pupils will go for the bulk 
of their informational courses to the public 
school system, and to the church school for 
special work to prepare them to be leaders 
and teachers. Pupils should come from 
every family, for say one year, and get into 
the spirit of the best in our churches, which 
may be centered in these schools. Their 
courses for preparing teachers, and their 
courses along other lines, should be coordi- 
nated with our public school system and de- 
veloped to prepare teachers for all schools. 
I should not care if a great many of our pub- 
lic normal schools became in larger part in- 
formational, trade, agricultural, and com- 
mercial schools. 

We need co-ordination in our denomina- 
tional work, also, because we have interna- 



THE SCHOOL 91 

tional opportunities which can best be met by 
a unified front. I believe we should delegate 
to every substantial organization designed to 
federate the churches all the ecclesiastical 
powers which belong to all the denominations 
— in other words, all the power that comes 
to us from Christ. Why divide that ecclesi- 
astical power among denominational bodies? 

While we need state coordination of these 
religious forces, I shall refer especially to 
the county as a unit. I proposed to the 
county of Montgomery adjoining the Dis- 
trict of Columbia, in a meeting called for 
that purpose, that the farmers of Maryland, 
the Young Men's Christian Association and 
the governmental and state forces interested 
in country life, enter upon a campaign in co- 
operation with the internal forces of that 
county and make of it a model " country 
life M county. We have already begun to see 
visions along many lines. 

In order to use figures a little more accur- 
ately in taking the county as a unit for reor- 
ganization, let us assume that a certain county 
is in the center of Iowa, with its approxi- 
mately one hundred counties. Let us as- 



92 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

same that we have one agricultural col- 
lege in the state; one agricultural high 
school in every ten counties, or ten in the 
state; and twenty consolidated and village 
rural schools in each county, or 2,000 in the 
state. 

Then let the consolidated rural school in 
the open country, patronized by one or two 
hundred farm families, with its ten-acre 
school farm and five- or six-room building and 
ample meeting hall for all public purposes, 
provide a community store and other facili- 
ties for doing cooperative business that a 
farmer cannot do for himself, a teacher 
trained to teach agriculture as a principal, 
and an assistant trained to teach home eco- 
nomics. Establish a ten-year course, the first 
six years' work to be taught by three assist- 
ant teachers partly trained in a denomina- 
tional college. Thus, speaking broadly, the 
principal and assistant principal will have 
fifty pupils, thirty pupils in the seventh and 
eighth grades, and twenty pupils in the first 
two high school years. These two teachers 
could take care of these fifty pupils from the 
seventh to the tenth grade for the six winter 



THE SCHOOL 93 

months and spend the alternate six months 
most profitably in going about teaching them 
and helping their parents in the summer time. 
Combined with the winter school, these sum- 
mer experiences, which take the teachers into 
the work of managing the farm, the farm 
home, and into the family and club social af- 
fairs, provide educational values quite equal 
to those of the six months in the winter. 
Then put beside this consolidated school an- 
other like area of ten acres and put your 
church and your minister's home there. 
Have as a count}- superintendent some man 
who has grown up in this consolidated rural 
school work, has been a student there also 
in an agricultural high school and in a re- 
ligious college. Likewise, an assistant county 
superintendent similarly trained in home 
economics, and for leadership, who is to be 
superintendent of the girls' education of these 
twenty communities. 

Add to the count}' service a count}" Young 
Men's Christian Association worker, a county 
Young Women's Christian Association 
worker, and also a county demonstration 
farmer to work with the mature farmers and 



94 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

even a county home efficiency woman to work 
with the home makers. 

The leading thought I wish to drive home 
is that county life has begun to recenter it- 
self about these larger consolidated rural 
school centers, and that here are the vital 
points for centering the work of the church. 
The youth will here become in his school life 
a social unit, and in many cases an economic 
and a political unit. The churches cannot 
afford to fail to fall gradually into line, for- 
get their denominational differences and settle 
down as unified bodies to work in the most 
vital relation to the educational, recreational, 
social and even the economic life of the farm- 
ers in these newly centered communities. 
The church should be beside the school. 
The county is a splendid unit for church 
federation. But the state and national lead- 
ers must acquiesce in and promote county 
church federation and local church union of 
all church efforts. There is need that our 
theological leaders devise some procedure, 
some kind of approved county federation, 
also plans for consolidated school districts, 
union of churches and such a union of effort 



THE SCHOOL 95 

that we can have a well paid rural ministry 
especially trained for this work. 

— Hon. JVillet M. Hays. 

Discussion 

PASTOR AND COUNTRY SCHOOL 

There are at least four things which the 
pastor may do in his own community in rela- 
tion to the school problem. 

First, he can visit the school, get its at- 
mosphere, note the text-books, the studies 
taught and the methods used. This will en- 
able him to influence the educational atmos- 
phere of his community. 

Second, he can infuse into education re- 
ligious ideals through more intelligent preach- 
ing, writing and discussion in the homes. He 
can make the community see that their edu- 
cational life is but a part of the larger re- 
ligious problem. 

Third, he can do all in his power to give 
Christian teachers to the school. I think the 
solution of the problem of teaching religion 
in the public school begins here. We should 
see that we have teachers with religious 



96 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

ideals, who have a reverent attitude toward 
all truth. 

Fourth, the pastor can aid in creating a 
demand for definite moral instruction in the 
public schools. I do not believe we can ever 
open up the old question of putting the Bible 
back in the public school, to be used for any 
specific sectarian teaching. There is a way 
in which moral instruction and the finer pass- 
ages in the Bible can be used in the school 
without opening up the old controversy. In 
this way the finer Christian virtues can be de- 
veloped and the growing children be made 
to see that their religious life is a real part 
of their educational life. 

Fifth, by introducing better educational 
methods into the Sunday-school and by de- 
veloping outlying district schools as social 
and religious centers. 

Such a program calls for great intelli- 
gence, wisdom and self-sacrifice, but it will 
more than repay the effort. 

— Dr. Robert Wells Veach. 

THE LESSON OF THE SEED 

I am very glad to supplement Assistant 



THE SCHOOL 97 

Secretary Hays' views upon this subject of 
education in rural districts and I most heartily 
endorse the proposition which he has made to 
improve rural conditions through the church 
and through the public school. There is no 
field that is so productive of rich results as 
this of rural education. The great need of 
the country today is the teaching of natural 
sciences more in our public schools and in our 
Sunday-schools. There is no teaching that is 
so rich in fruitfulness as the teaching of the 
parables and they ought to be taught in our 
public schools as well as more definitely and 
clearly in our Sunday-schools. Take the les- 
son for instance of the sowing of the seed — 
the sowing upon good ground and upon the 
poor ground. See the wonderful lesson that 
could be made from that parable in the 
course — the thirty, the sixty, the hundred- 
fold increase. Now what would that mean 
to the community where this is carried out 
scientifically ? What does that mean not only 
spiritually but also financially? The great 
need of our rural districts today is financial 
support in church work. The public school 
is, of course, supported by the state, but there 



98 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

is a lack of liberal support of our church 
work in many rural districts. This would 
bring to every community in which it was 
taught the financial support which the church 
so stands in need of today. 

— George T. Powell. 



V 
THE GRANGE 

I have no right to speak for the grange 
officially, but for nearly twenty years I have 
been a member and to some degree a student 
of grange history, work and purpose. I be- 
lieve in it absolutely — not always in what 
it does, not always in its spirit as shown in 
local bodies, but in its essential function and 
purpose and meaning. 

There are two methods of approach to the 
question which put fully is this: " By what 
practical means can the country church co- 
operate with the grange in rural community 
building." One method of approach is to 
discuss details. Here is a country church in 
a community where there is a grange. How 
may they work together for the up-building 
of the community? The other method of 
approach is to suggest the fundamental func- 
tions of the church and of the grange, if we 
can find out what they are, and with that as 
a starting point outline means of cooperation. 

99 



ioo THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

Unless we make up our minds that the 
grange has a fundamental function, I do not 
believe that we can really do much in the way 
of practical cooperation between church and 
grange. If the grange is an interloper in 
the community, if it is doing the work that 
the church can do, then the best thing is to 
get rid of the grange. My own philosophy 
of country life has a very significant place for 
the grange — using it as a type of all farm- 
ers' organizations — for it may be the farm- 
ers' union in the South or a farmers' club in 
some small community. I do not believe 
that the church can ever do for any local 
community or for the country as a whole all 
of the things that need to be done. I do not 
believe that the Church as a whole or in its 
individual parts can or should do the major 
work that lies before the grange as a great 
organized movement on behalf of rural life. 

The grange in many communities has been 
shoved off from its main purpose and has be- 
come merely a social club. It does not hold 
up its fundamental task of education and its 
fundamental task of organizing the group 
power on behalf of its membership, on behalf 



THE GRANGE 101 

of countrymen as a whole, and on behalf of 
national uplift and advancement. But if the 
grange is true to its work it has a great mis- 
sion. 

It is very difficult to assign special tasks to 
the church and other special tasks to the 
grange. For instance — We have a church 
and a grange in a given community. Shall 
one hold sociables and the other not? Well, 
then, if both shall hold sociables what shall 
be the distinction in the two? I do not be- 
lieve we can answer the question. I do not 
believe it is a question to be answered. The 
real question is, what is the principal task of 
the church on the one side and what is the 
principal task of the grange on the other side. 
If one institution is not doing some things 
that are obviously needed and the other in- 
stitution can do these, I do not see why they 
may not be done by the institution that 
recognizes the need for them, although they 
may not, on first thought, apparently belong 
to it. I think we are likely to get mixed up 
in our thinking and acting on this question 
unless we keep going back to the fundamen- 
tal work that is to be done by these institu- 



io2 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

tions. Practically this means doing the thing 
that most needs doing. But all the time let 
us work toward making the institutions 
" function/' so that they may work out their 
tasks. 

Let us consider these four practical, imme- 
diate questions. First, shall the church insti- 
tute a grange in the communities where there 
is no grange? I say unhesitatingly " Yes." 
Some other organization may be better. I 
am not a protagonist of the grange as the 
only organization. But the development of 
some type of farmers' organization, whose 
ichief purpose is that of gathering up the in- 
terests and capacities and powers of the 
farming class on behalf of class advancement 
and transmuting those same powers into 
terms of national welfare, is one of the fun- 
damental tasks in our rural life. 

Second, How shall the church cooperate 
to best advantage in communities where the 
grange is efficient? It seems to me that the 
church people ought to be leaders in the 
grange. If the grange is true to its purpose 
and the church is true to its purpose there 
will not be very much over-lapping. I think 



THE GRANGE 103 

the grange can well emphasize the farm side, 
the educational side and the economic and 
political questions. Cooperation consists in 
the people of the community being interested 
in both because, although they are headed in 
somewhat different directions, they expect to 
reach the same goal finally. 

Third, If the grange is inefficient what can 
the church do to meet the community needs 
along the lines that should be supplied by 
the grange. If there is no grange and if it 
cannot be revived by the people, sometimes 
it can be revived by the minister. If that 
cannot be done I do not see why, as has been 
suggested, the church may not do many things 
that might ordinarily be left to the grange. 
There are country ministers and country 
churches that have settled practical questions 
— i better roads, telephone lines, educational 
work. I do not see why that cannot be done 
by the church simply because it has to be done 
and the church is the only organization that 
can do it. But I do not believe that is the 
ideal method. We ought to try to bring in 
the organization that naturally deals with 
these other things and then get that organi- 



io4 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

zation headed right. Get its purpose and 
spirit right. 

Fourth, Is there not danger of rivalry be- 
tween the grange and the church? I remem- 
ber ten years ago reading in a grange paper 
an article containing this, " Up in our coun- 
try, the grange is rapidly taking the place of 
the church, and I do not see why it may not 
take the place of the church.'' Anybody who 
knows about the grange work knows that it 
has a moral purpose, its ritual being per- 
meated with moral and religious thought; and 
a man cannot be a member of a grange who 
is at all sensitive to spiritual things without 
feeling that underlying it all there is a great 
spiritual idea. But no level-headed person 
believes that the grange can take the place of 
the church. Sometimes it is asserted that 
there is danger of rivalry when the grange 
holds its meetings on Saturday night, for 
people do not feel like going to church the 
next day. This is a detail and people ought 
to be wise enough and kind enough and Chris- 
tian enough to work that out. 

I think it is significant that the phrase 
11 rural community building " has been used 



THE GRANGE 105 

in this topic because it implies that the grange, 
school, church and farmers' institute have 
one main purpose, which is to build up the 
community. Let the phrase be interpreted 
as signifying the building up of the Kingdom 
in the community. Hence it ought to mean 
that the grange, the farmers' institute and 
school as well as the church are ministers to 
the Kingdom. If they are not, then they 
must be rejuvenated or else put out of busi- 
ness. They are all concerned in one big job 
though they have different parts in the job, 
just as different contractors take different 
parts in the erection of a building. 

I find myself thinking along the lines Sec- 
retary Hays has suggested, that sooner or 
later we must have, not a new organization, 
but such a group, such a federating, if you 
please, such a coming together, such a co- 
operation that we shall think of community 
building as a problem, and then attack it with 
all the forces at our command. These forces 
are, practically speaking, the social institu- 
tions of the community. They will over-lap 
to some degree in any community. But in 
general each will find its own task and all 



io6 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

will press forward together because they have 
just one job. 

Yes, the church and the grange can co- 
operate. Perhaps more than in any other 
organizations, the leaders of the church and 
the leaders of the grange can forward this 
movement for community building and plan 
for this cooperative or federated endeavor. 
I do not know yet what is to be the nucelus 
around which this cooperation shall take 
place. The various communities are feeling 
their way. But I am sure it has got to come 
because it represents the central religious 
idea, that of the upbuilding of the Kingdom 
in each rural community, in terms of the very 
best thought and life of our time and in ac- 
cordance with the eternal laws of life. 

— President Kenyon L. Butterfield. 

Discussion 

ATTITUDE OF THE CHURCH TOWARD THE 
GRANGE 

There are good granges and bad granges. 
The church has a responsibility to the com- 
munity as well as to the individual. If there 



THE GRANGE 107 

are wayward granges as there are wayward 
boys, isn't there a responsibility for the 
church to look after the wayward grange; 
and if the grange itself, back in its origin and 
in the minds of its best leaders, is working 
toward a high purpose, is not the difficulty 
with the wayward grange to be found in the 
fact that it is not true to its ideals? Doesn't 
this then in a way suggest the method for the 
church? Should the church attack the way- 
ward grange or should the church attempt 
to bring out the best in the grange by appeal- 
ing to its best principles? I fear in too many 
cases, as soon as we see the naughty grange, 
we proceed to chastise it if we can possibly 
catch it. I remember a very wise remark 
of a former teacher of mine who is now 
President of the University of Rochester. 
" Jesus was never embarrassed by the pres- 
ence of goodness." By that he did not mean 
that Jesus never felt embarrassed when He 
came in the presence of a good person for 
fear his own character would be over- 
shadowed. What he did mean was this — 
that when Jesus saw goodness in a man he 
did not attempt to discount that goodness 



108 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

but recognized it as goodness. May we not 
simply apply this in the attitude of the min- 
isters and churches toward the grange? 
When we see some feature of goodness in 
the grange or some other institution, let us 
not distrust that goodness. It seems to me 
that doing that — distrusting them — comes 
perilously near the unpardonable sin. Let 
us work on that which is best and develop 
out of that a healthy life in every aspect of 
the community. 

— Dr. William H. Allison. 

THE FARMER'S CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS 

The class-consciousness of the farmer and 
what we can make out of it is a subject that 
the country minister and teacher have not 
thought enough about. At a meeting of the 
American Sociological Society I heard John 
R. Commons says that a man ought not to 
be so much interested in the way he might 
get out of his class in order to make something 
of himself as in the way to make something 
of himself within his class. I think this 
principle applies to the rural church problem, 
to the grange and to all organizations in the 



THE GRANGE 109 

rural districts. In spite of all the jokes and 
jibes on the farmer, it is possible to find a 
farmer, even today, famed for his whiskers, 
proud of the fact that he is a farmer. The 
time is coming when, by intelligent leadership 
in the working out of this problem, we are 
going to have young men proud of the fact 
that they are rural pastors. I know some 
that I should not be proud of, and no one 
else would be. 

Another matter that is of interest here is 
the financing of any proposition of successful 
cooperation and achievement in the country 
districts. It is sometimes urged that the 
farmer is not really generous about paying 
for things. I have been a book agent and 
my field was in the rural district. I found 
that I could always collect on a book that 
a farmer said he would take, and my job was 
to get him to say he would take it. Now I 
believe that the moment we make the rural 
farmer, a farmer who is still on the job in the 
country, who has not moved to the village, 
see that this institution we are establishing 
in the country has value, he will support it. 
The difficulty is in making it go until he sees 



no THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

it. I make this suggestion to those who have 
control of the home missionary boards and 
the distribution of their funds. I should like 
to see at least four or five experiments made 
by the home missionary board in every de- 
nomination. These would involve financing 
a proposition in a rural district that has never 
yet been successfully worked, with a man at 
the head who sees the broader definition of 
the Kingdom and its possibilities in that com- 
munity. He should be supported until he 
can prove to that community that what he 
has is of value; then they will support it. 
Now I know city churches or community 
churches where you have inter-denomina- 
tional cleavage and too often it is in these 
over-churched communities that home mission 
funds are spent rather than in the under- 
churched town or village. By working in 
the other direction, the church might even 
take the lead in developing a farmer class- 
consciousness that would make rural church- 
members put off their denominational preju- 
dices and get together. 

I am very glad for all the expressions of 
what we call a broader definition of the King- 



THE GRANGE in 

dom of God, and I believe the time is now 
here when any man or woman who is doing 
a necessary part of the world's work — a 
part that has to do with the happiness and 
health of people — ought to be recognized 
and is being recognized as a part of the or- 
ganization of the Kingdom of God in this 
world. — Professor Edwin L. Earp. 

A GRANGE TENT 

Recently I was called to a purely rural 
church to lecture. When we climbed into 
the gallery to put up the screen I found a lot 
of tent poles. I asked what they meant. 
The pastor of the church said: " They be- 
long to our big tent. We put it up outside 
for the entertainments which our grange 
gives. We have given some very elaborate 
plays. Once we had to bring them into the 
church when there was a heavy storm. " The 
solution which has been worked out in that 
particular church makes the church and 
grange apparently in complete accord with 
each other. The secret of this success is the 
fact that the daughter of the pastor is very 
successful as an organizer. She is the lee- 



uz THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

turer in the grange. The pastor's family is 
the unifying influence between the two organi- 
zations. The next morning the wife of the 
pastor took me to the railroad station. 
When she turned back she called to the agent, 
" Is the library here?" I asked what she 
meant and she said: " It is the library for our 
grange. It comes to my daughter. She 
takes charge of it." This is the way one 
New Jersey church and grange are cooperat- 
ing. — Rev. William Sheddan. 



VI 

THE CHURCH AND THE FARMERS' 
INSTITUTE 

The Christian Church was established to 
promote Christianity in the world, to intro- 
duce into the hearts of men personal re- 
ligion. In doing this it was to show, first, 
that man is a sinner; that the end of sin is 
eternal death; and that salvation from sin is 
by Jesus Christ. This was to be its great 
mission. In carrying it out, it was to utilize 
the revelation and teaching found in the holy 
Scriptures. It now points, for examples of 
the efficacy of the remedies it offers, to re- 
formed men and women; and for the effect 
of its teaching upon society, to the care of 
the destitute, the restraint of evil, and the 
good order and general prosperity of the 
people wherever the Church has been estab- 
lished. 

The Church, as an organization, is commis- 
sioned in addition to its teaching, to look after 

113 



ii 4 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

the poor, the wretched, the helpless, the sick, 
the unfortunate and the sinning. It is to 
bind up broken hearts, to comfort those who 
mourn, encourage the weak, befriend the 
widow and the fatherless, visit the prisoner 
and warn those who are unruly and such as 
are living in sin. Through these duties 
faithfully taught and performed in and by 
the Church, it is expected that those who com- 
pose its membership will, as individuals, as 
merchants, farmers, lawyers, physicians, me- 
chanics, and day laborers, exert their influ- 
ence for the improvement of the schools, for 
the suppression of traffic in rum, for the de- 
vising of better methods of living; and that 
they will consider the health, the wage and 
the general welfare and happiness of their 
neighbors. If these individual Christians 
find that they can do more efficient work by 
association, then they form societies and work 
through them as in the organization of so- 
cieties for the promotion of temperance, for 
the betterment of the poor, for the relief of 
the insane, for the erection of hospitals, in- 
firmaries and homes for the aged and unfor- 
tunate, and similar projects, as farmers' in- 
stitutes, granges and other neighborhood or- 



THE FARMERS' INSTITUTE 115 

ganizations. They will form these organiza- 
tions outside of the church and conduct them 
not as church functions, but as the outgrowth 
of the teaching that the church has given and 
of a sense of duty to their fellows that the 
church has implanted in their individual 
hearts. 

It was not originally the province of the 
Christian Church, as an organization, to 
show men how to make money, how to attain 
skill in the performance of manual opera- 
tions, how to succeed in politics, to promote 
games, or to finance business undertakings. 
Its work was spiritual; it dealt only with es- 
sentials, with the springs of life in the indi- 
vidual. 

Component Parts of the Church 

Many of those who speak of the church 
doing this or that, when questioned, admit 
that they mean not the corporation as a body, 
but the preacher. Frequently where the 
term church is used the true meaning is had 
when the word " preacher " is substituted. 
To discuss the subject intelligently an analy- 
sis, therefore, seems to be necessary in order 
to avoid confusion of terms. 



n6 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

A local church is a composite, made 
up of (a) the Pastor; (b) the Session, or 
Ecclesiastical Court; (c) the Trustees, or 
Business Board; (d) the Missionary and 
similar Societies; (e) the Congregation or 
lay members; and (f) the Church as a De- 
nomination or distinct body of believers. 

Functions of These Different Elements 

( i) The Pastor. He is the spiritual ex- 
pert of the church, charged with the teaching 
of spiritual and moral truth. His duties in 
this direction are already more numerous 
and onerous than he can fully and satisfac- 
torily perform. The fact that within 
the bounds of the parish of every coun- 
try pastor there are irreligious individuals 
and families to be sought out and 
saved, as well as members of the church 
needing special attention and spiritual guid- 
ance, is proof that work in this direction is 
not completed. It is a serious question, 
therefore, whether the pastor's efforts along 
these lines should be relaxed before those 
resident in his community are brought within 
the pale of the Christian Church and before 



THE FARMERS' INSTITUTE 117 

the members of his congregation are brought 
to a fair realization of their responsibility 
for the spiritual enlightenment of mankind. 
There is no other man in the community spe- 
cially charged or fitted by education and ex- 
perience for doing the pastor's work as a 
spiritual teacher and adviser. Consequently, 
if his efforts are impeded or suspended in 
these respects, the church life and the com- 
munity life will correspondingly suffer. This 
does not mean that he shall fail to encourage 
proper social activities in his community, or 
to perform other public service, either along 
farmers' institute or similar lines, but it does 
mean that he shall not devote time to these 
matters to the neglect of the other, and that 
in this country, at least, it is not his function 
to teach the growing of corn or potatoes or 
pigs. Other agents better equipped for giv- 
ing this kind of instruction exist and are 
available. 

This may be regarded by some more en- 
thusiastic promoter of the country life move- 
ment as being a narrow view of the coun- 
try pastor's sphere. It is true that it nar- 
rows his activities and responsibility mainly 



n8 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

and first and foremost to the lines of work for 
which he has been divinely chosen as well as 
specifically called by the congregation to 
whom he ministers. 

One of the greatest dangers that now 
threatens country people through this coun- 
try life or extension movement is that it may 
affect well-established and valuable institu- 
tions injuriously by distracting attention from 
their importance in community life to these 
newer features now being introduced. One 
danger that is now apparent in enlisting the 
country church in favor of this movement to 
the extent that its promoters desire is that the 
fundamental work for which the church ex- 
ists may be minimized in the presence of these 
more sensational measures so popular and 
promising such great results. If this hap- 
pens, the country pastor will lose his appre- 
ciation of the obligations and opportunities 
of his sacred calling to serve the congrega- 
tion to which he ministers and remit his 
efforts for the salvation of souls, in his de- 
votion to organizations and enterprises most 
valuable and useful to the community, but 
with the direction or success of which he, 



THE FARMERS' INSTITUTE 119 

as a minister of the gosepl, is not charged. 

If a practicing physician, for example, 
were to leave his patients to suffer while he 
engaged in some other public service, no mat- 
ter how important or useful in itself, he would 
be criticised, and justly, for having neglected 
his own proper function and for having as- 
sumed obligations incompatible with proper 
attention to those for which he was first of 
all responsible. If he w T ere to do this habit- 
ually the time would soon arrive when his pa- 
tients would refuse his service and seek some 
other physician more devoted to their inter- 
ests. 

In both of these cases, however, that of 
the minister and that of the physician, there 
should be a sincere desire to promote the 
community interest and a willingness to assist 
when this assistance can be given without in- 
jury to the particular set of duties for which 
the individual first of all and above all is re- 
sponsible. It is to call attention to this limi- 
tation that I have expanded this explanation 
to meet possible criticism that may arise re- 
specting my definition of the country pas- 
tor's sphere of work. . 



120 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

(2) The Session, or ecclesiastical court 
of the church. This is made up, in the Pres- 
byterian denomination, of its eldership, with 
the pastor, and is charged with the oversight 
of the congregation in spiritual matters. 
The individual members of the session or 
other body having control of these affairs, are 
the agents of the pastor in carrying out his 
plans for the moral and spiritual develop- 
ment of the membership. Their functions 
as a session are wholly spiritual, moral and 
disciplinary. 

(3) The Trustees. The trustees have 
charge of the secular business of the church, 
so far as its functions are secular. They rep- 
resent the corporation in its legal aspect with 
relation to matters affecting its property hold- 
ings and rights and they are limited in their 
activities by the charter under which the or- 
ganization as a religious society operates. 

(4) The Missionary Society and other 
societies. These include the Sabbath-school, 
and various young people's societies, which are 
both religious and social and are not organ- 
ized for business purposes or for the promo- 
tion of secular enterprises. Their service 
both in the congregation and as it affects the 



THE FARMERS' INSTITUTE 121 

work done at large is for the spiritual and 
moral uplift rather than the financial better- 
ment of communities. 

(5) The Membership of the congrega- 
tion. As a body the congregation is 
religious, although the functions of the mem- 
bers, as individuals, are both religious, and 
secular. 

(6) The Church as a denomination. 
This is a corporate body organized 
for conducting religious services. It is not 
organized for trade, for politics or other 
secular pursuits. 

Cooperation with farmers' institutes. 

If this analysis and statement of function 
is correct or even approximately so, it would 
then seem that cooperation of general char- 
acter by the church with the farmers' insti- 
tute is confined chiefly to that of and by the 
members as individuals rather than that by 
the church as an organization. Practically, 
this cooperation has already been effected in 
most communities of the United States. For 
the year ended June 30, 191 1, 3,400,000 
persons came together in farmers' institute 
assemblies to consider methods for rural bet- 



12Z THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

terment and were addressed by over noo 
expert teachers in subjects relating to agri- 
culture, domestic science and rural improve- 
ment. The institute, embracing as it does 
in its membership men and women of all de- 
nominations and political beliefs, is therefore 
essentially the Church at work in a practical 
way for the betterment of rural condi- 
tions. The same is true of other rural or- 
ganizations of which the farmers' institute is 
a type. 

When, therefore, the entire rural popula- 
tion is either associated in institute work or 
in horticultural societies, the grange, the far- 
mers' union, or other rural organization re- 
lating to agriculture and country life, we 
shall have the cooperation for the uplift of 
the community that we desire and the best 
that has hitherto been devised. These local 
societies are directed by specialists thor- 
oughly equipped for accomplishing the 
things that are contemplated, and they pro- 
vide therefore a most effective organization 
and method for rural betterment. They pro- 
vide a form of harmonious cooperation be- 
tween the church and other rural forces thor- 



THE FARMERS' INSTITUTE 123 

oughly efficient and without any member be- 
ing required to first sink his denominational 
preference or political belief. They should, 
therefore, have the encouragement and sup- 
port of the church to the extent of its limita- 
tions. 

It is not necessary for a church as a church 
to run a farm, or an orchard, or a stock barn 
in order to benefit rural people and improve 
agriculture, or to provide a swimming pool 
or a gymnasium for the young people of the 
community. Such service when needed can 
best be and will be performed by a commun- 
ity organization created specially for the 
purpose and it will have the cooperation of 
members from every church as well as of in- 
terested persons outside. Let the church 
spire stand for spiritual life and its better- 
ment. If this is faithfully attended to, the 
members themselves will see that these other 
things so needful to a well-rounded rural life 
are supplied. 

While it is the bounden duty and ought to 
be expected of the church as an organization 
and of its officers as officers to attend first of 
all faithfully to the moral and spiritual af- 



124 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

fairs of the community, at the same time it 
is incumbent upon the individual members, 
acting either as individuals or associated with 
each other in organizations of secular char- 
acter, to promote the particular business aims 
of interest to the community and engage ac- 
tively in the work of improving the social 
conditions. 

Sphere of the Pastor 9 s Influence 

The pastor's opportunity for influencing 
community betterment lies mainly in his faith- 
ful teaching of Scripture truth; in his visit- 
ing throughout the community, not as an agri- 
cultural expert, but as a religious teacher and 
spiritual adviser, influencing young and old 
to the practice of good morals and fair deal- 
ing; and in forming, through his teaching 
and by his personal life and example, ideals 
in Christian character to be emulated by those 
among whom he lives. If this is done, then 
the individual members of the church as 
they participate in the secular affairs of life 
will introduce into the associations that they 
join these same principles of morality and 
high ideals and thus bring to bear upon those 
who are not members of any Christian church 



THE FARMERS' INSTITUTE 125 

the influence of these churches, thereby cre- 
ating and extending a moral sentiment 
throughout the community that shall promote 
thrift and stand for good order and the 
proper observance of the moral and religious 
principles and practices upon which civilized 
society is founded. In the rural districts 
most people are already affiliated more or 
less closely with some religious society or de- 
nomination. What they need is spiritual 
quickening; they need to be brought to feel 
more deeply their obligation to God and to 
their fellow men, to have their sympathies 
for and their impulses to aid the unfortunate 
aroused. The faithful preaching of the gos- 
pel will accomplish this and out of this the 
other benefits enumerated will naturally flow. 

Cooperation by the Church as a Body 

The church, therefore, as a body, can best 
cooperate in rural community building 
through and along moral, social and spiritual 
lines, leaving the teaching of technical busi- 
ness operations to the individual membership 
and to specialists equipped for the purpose 
and having expert knowledge of the methods 
best adapted to produce results desired. 



126 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

Methods of Cooperation 

There are, however, forms of cooperation 
among and by rural churches for the better- 
ment of rural conditions that are proper, 
practicable and effective. A few of these are 
here suggested and others will grow out of 
the work as it proceeds. 

(a) The Minister's Weekly or Monthly 
Meeting. This is a coming together 
statedly of the pastors of all the 
churches in the community for conference re- 
specting the community welfare. Such as- 
sociation begets fraternal feeling and does 
much to break down the prejudice that once 
existed among denominations. It tends to 
unite the churches in the teaching of timely 
truth and in influencing Christian people to 
undertake the correcting of abuses that 
threaten the community life. The ministers' 
meeting is a most potent agency for rural bet- 
terment as well as for the spiritual develop- 
ment of the membership of the respective 
churches. 

In a number of localities meetings of min- 
isters, such as have been outlined, are now 
held for consultation respecting the interests 



THE FARMERS' INSTITUTE 127 

of their several congregations. Where- 
ever this plan has been tried it has, 
I think, been generally satisfactory. 
The plan now proposed is to extend 
this idea to all rural communities. It 
is believed that if this educated body of 
men familiar with the conditions in their re- 
spective districts and thoroughly interested in 
rural betterment were to meet statedly for 
the discussion of the problems that confront 
them as rural pastors, many of these problems 
would speedily be solved. In any case the 
consideration of such matters by trained, con- 
scientious scholars living in daily contact with 
rural people is not only practicable but prom- 
ises as much for the ultimate solution of the 
question of rural betterment as any other yet 
proposed. It is utilizing the highest intelli- 
gence and the most unselfish body of men 
that the community has in studying its prob- 
lems and it combines that intelligence in well 
digested recommendations to be followed by 
all. 

If such a movement can be started and 
rural ministers of all denominations in all lo- 
calities can be brought together statedly for 



128 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

conference, as suggested, a great impulse will 
undoubtedly be given to the country life prop- 
aganda and it will have the advantage of 
being intelligently and harmoniously directed. 
I believe that the plan is entirely practicable. 
At all events, if country ministers, who are 
of all men most interested in rural develop- 
ment, are unwilling to unite for its better- 
ment, it is not likely that their parishioners 
will do so. It is, therefore, imperative that 
the ministers lead the way. When they 
make the effort and seriously take up the 
work, then we may hope to see their congre- 
gations following their example. 

No better body exists for getting these 
ministerial bodies organized and at work 
than the Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tion. Its undenominational character and its 
energetic and widely distributed force of ca- 
pable men fit it peculiarly for undertaking this 
work and carrying it on to ultimate success. 

(b) Lay Leader's Meeting. After 
the ministers' meeting has become established 
a further step in cooperation may be taken 
with promise of success. It consists in hold- 
ing similar stated meetings by the eldership 



THE FARMERS' INSTITUTE 129 

or official lay leaders of the churches. 
These meetings would bring together a body 
of men who are officially and individually in- 
terested in the promotion of the moral and 
religious life of the community. Their 
meeting periodically will stimulate them to 
increased effort and to unity of action where 
such unity is desired, thus creating a strong 
body of religious leaders in each community 
who can be depended upon to assist in any 
great movement for the betterment of rural 
life, acting either as individuals or associated 
in the institute or other rural organizations. 

(c) Sabbath-school Teachers' Meeting. 
At present the work of the teachers in 
the several churches in a community is 
largely disconnected and individual. If 
the teachers in these churches were to hold 
united meetings for social purposes and to 
discuss the problems that confront them in 
their work and to plan for new or community 
work that might be undertaken, an enthus- 
iastic and efficient body of workers would be 
distributed through the country districts, uni- 
fied under a common leadership and directed 
in matters for the general good in a way that 



i 3 o THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

would be most powerful for the improvement 
of the moral and social life of the district 
they represent. 

Conclusion 

If ever consolidation of the churches 
comes, which I greatly doubt, it will not 
come suddenly or by force but by the slow 
process of intimate mingling in something of 
the manner that has here been indicated, until 
acquaintance has been formed and the points 
of agreement have been discovered and the 
non-essential character of the points of dif- 
ference is realized. Quickest and best re- 
sults may be achieved by some orderly, sys- 
tematic method such as this, of universal ap- 
plication and beginning with those most fa- 
vorably disposed and capable. The assem- 
bling of the rural pastors for conference will 
naturally be followed by regular stated meet- 
ings of the leading church officials and of 
those who instruct the young of the commun- 
ity in morals and religion — the teachers in 
the Sabbath-schools. Then as the laity or in- 
dividual members of the churches intermingle 
and participate in the farmers' institutes, the 



THE FARMERS' INSTITUTE 131 

agricultural society, and the rural clubs, prac- 
tical cooperation will be secured by the entire 
body of each congregation with every other 
congregation in the work of community build- 
ing, both secular and religious. Thus the 
essentials of cooperation are had and virtual 
concert of effort secured. Should we not 
strive for this practical cooperation first and 
now, leaving matters of uniformity of name 
and denominational consolidation to come in 
with the millennium if they shall be deemed 
desirable and advantageous then? 

The church may justly be regarded as the 
center or heart of rural life. If it performs 
its functions in a proper and healthful way 
its pulsations will beat steadily and the 
spiritual forces driven by its power into every 
part of the community will nourish and up- 
build the social body in all its parts. In 
doing this it need not abandon its position as 
a spiritual teacher, either in whole or in 
part, for some side line promising more im- 
mediate and directly visible results. It will 
accomplish more by remaining steadfastly in 
its place year in and year out, preaching, 
not the art of acquiring temporal wealth and 



i 3 2 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

material property, but how men may obtain 
each for himself the unsearchable riches of 
Christ. By rigidly adhering to this its di- 
vine function, it will aid rural life most cer- 
tainly and effectively, and out of it will most 
speedily come the social, material and spiri- 
tual uplift that we all so earnestly desire. 
Hon. John Hamilton. 

UNION MINISTERS' MEETINGS 

In my recent correspondence, I have re- 
ceived requests from three different counties 
to speak at county union ministers' meetings 
of all denominations; and the request in 
every case came from the county secretary 
who had succeeded in getting the ministers 
together. We are much encouraged to be- 
lieve that the movement is in progress and 
that the work of the Kingdom of God is 
going to be organized increasingly on the 
county basis, as a county-wide campaign for 
righteousness. 

— Professor G. Walter Fiske. 



VII 

LEADERSHIP 

The county work or the rural work of the 
Young Men's Christian Association has to 
do with just such conditions as have been 
described. The fundamental principle rec- 
ognized by this department is that leader- 
ship is the solution of every problem. 
Therefore we give ourselves untiringly to 
the discovery, development and training of 
leaders. We try to discover, in the various 
communities in which we work, the tasks 
that ought to be done and we recognize the 
fact that everybody in the community has 
something to give in service. Now no man 
will work well along all lines. Some men 
will perhaps do a lot of things fairly well; 
but a man in these times must be a specialist 
to attain great success. It has been stated 
over and over again that one great key to 
success is the recognition of the fact that the 
Kingdom of God is bigger than any one de- 
nomination; and the County Work Depart- 

133 



i 3 4 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

merit of the Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tion is not so much concerned in the pro- 
jection of a new institution into the rural com- 
munity as it is that the fundamental organ- 
izations of country life such as the home, 
the church and the school shall unite as far 
as possible and do their work properly. 
Therefore, we attempt to establish a com- 
mon platform upon which all these agencies 
can and do get together. The best thing 
about this country work is that it works, it 
delivers the goods. It is finding men who 
see the vision of the possibility of what can 
be done with their own lives in a natural 
way, if they are willing to interpret these 
lives unselfishly and throw them alongside 
the lives of somebody who needs help. We 
sometimes find a man who has been a con- 
sistent church-goer but who has not found 
adequate expression for the thing he can do 
best for the up-building of the Kingdom of 
God. He probably sits in the same pew 
Sunday after Sunday, year in and year out. 
He probably is pointed out to the younger 
generation as a man of unquestioned in- 
tegrity; but as an aggressive and dominant 



LEADERSHIP 135 

force for the extension of the Kingdom of 
God he has been a failure. Then through 
the county work there comes to him some 
day a suggestion that he can use some special 
talent which God has given him in a specific 
way. That man is suddenly aroused from 
his lethargy and linked up to the needs of 
the community, thus releasing a new force 
for the Kingdom and the community. In 
many towns men have gathered together 
and eliminating denominational differences 
have conducted a social survey for that com- 
munity; they have made a chart of com- 
munity needs, just as plain as the architect's 
blueprint. And when they have shown to all 
the men in town what needs to be done in the 
erection of a community structure — one 
that will stand the efficiency test — and as- 
signed definite tasks to definite men, the men 
respond. The paper hanger does not at- 
tempt to do the plumbing nor the plumber the 
painting, but many a man who up to this time 
has not been considered as a real aggressive 
force finds opportunity for the expression of 
real community interest. Such an alignment 
would put in his right place the country edi- 



i 3 6 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

tor already referred to who was doing more 
for his community than some ministers. 
A Task for every Man. 

He was the station agent on one of the 
western roads — a good man, they said, 
with a sort of negative goodness. His atti- 
tude was right on moral questions and he at- 
tended church services regularly. No one 
could charge him with doing anything wrong 
and, as in the case of so many other good 
men, no one was conscious of his ever do- 
ing anything aggressively right. He was 
an average church member, but in many re- 
spects was like the man of whom his boy 
said when asked if his father was a Christian, 
" Yes, but I guess he isn't working very 
hard at it." 

At various times he had tried to teach a 
Sunday-school class of boys but had met with 
indifferent success — he had been unable to 
establish a point of contact. Other forms 
of Christian service he tried and succeeded 
only fairly well. There was nothing in the 
regular activities of the church that he could 
do well for, as he said — he didn't know 
how. 



LEADERSHIP 137 

One day the county secretary of the Young 
Men's Christian Association said to him, 
" There is a distinct task in this town for 
every man and a man for every task and the 
business of the Young Men's Christian Asso- 
ciation is to tie the task to the man and the 
man to the task. In other words, Bill, there 
is some one thing that you can do for this 
community and the Kingdom of God better 
than any other man in town. 

" What is it?" said Bill. 

" You can gather about you a bunch of boys 
one night a week and teach them applied elec- 
tricity. You are a telegraph operator and 
you can take the instruments apart, put them 
together, put up the wires, set up the bat- 
teries and teach these boys how to send and 
receive messages." 

" Would that be Christian service?" said 
Bill. 

11 It certainly would," said the secretary, 
11 if you would undertake it in the spirit of 
Christ and promise to stay by the job in spite 
of difficulties." 

Bill thought it over carefully and agreed 
to undertake it. Said he, " The secretary is 



i 3 8 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

right; I can do this one thing better than 
any other man in town and perhaps this is 
the way for me to get into the lives of some 
boys who are not very much interested in 
Sunday-school but who need the leadership 
of a Christian man, nevertheless." 

No man can accept leadership of this char- 
acter lightly, and Bill prayed that his con- 
tact with these boys might do more for them 
than teach them applied electricity. 

He had his troubles. The night of the 
first meeting eighteen boys were present but 
after the newness began to wear off the at- 
tendance dwindled and some nights there 
would be only a few. One night no one came 
but this leader was not discouraged, for had 
he not accepted this leadership as a calling 
from God and was he not the only man in 
town who could do this service? He discov- 
ered that leadership of this kind involved real 
sacrifice and some of his social and fraternal 
relations had to be given up. More than 
once he was tempted to quit, but he remem- 
bered the basis on which he had undertaken 
this work and stuck to his post. 

Presently the boys began to ask themselves 



LEADERSHIP 139 

and each other why their leader did so much 
for them and why he turned his back on so- 
cial engagements that they knew had been 
dear to him in order to be with them. One 
day one of them asked him and when Bill 
opened up his big heart and told him the 
real reason — that he loved them, with a 
strong, manly love, this boy told the other 
boys and one by one these boys said, " I 
want to be the kind of a man that Bill is." 
Several have taken a stand for the Christian 
life and joined the church and all of them 
believe in Bill and Bill's religion. 

By the subtle process known as character 
contagion, Bill has transformed the lives of 
these boys and the impact of his consecrated 
personality upon the telegraph class has ac- 
complished three things : First, it has changed 
the ideals of these boys so that they too want 
to help the other fellow. Second, it has 
raised the rural standard of the town so that 
material conditions in the home, church and 
school are improved ; for the spirit of service 
is contagious. Third, it has given the man 
who was willing to pay the price a vision of 
Christian service that he never dreamed was 



i 4 o THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

possible. " I am getting out of it vastly 
more than I've put into it," is his testimony. 
He has been changed from an ordinary church 
member to a dominant factor in the extension 
of the Kingdom of God. And any man can 
have this same experience if he will find his 
job and stick to it. 

— Albert E. Roberts. 

REACHING THE BOYS 
I am particularly interested in one method 
of attacking this country problem which is 
often omitted from discussions because of 
the modesty of the men who are doing the 
work. I served for a short time as country 
pastor in one of the counties of Massachu- 
setts, and for a much longer time I have been 
teaching the Bible to boys, a large proportion 
of whom come from these country districts. 
For the last three years, I have served on 
our County Committee of Young Men's 
Christian Associations. In that movement I 
believe we have the most practical attempt 
that has been made to solve the country pro- 
blem, so far as it concerns the boys who are 
going to make our men. 



LEADERSHIP 141 

The great problem in the country district is 
to find men who will take the initiative in de- 
veloping the social and religious life of the 
community along better lines. I have no 
word of criticism of the country pastor. I 
have worked with these men, I know their 
problems and sympathize with them; but 
what is needed in the country is more laymen 
who will realize their responsibility to the 
young men and boys in their community, and 
put forth an honest effort to fulfill it. By be- 
ginning at the bottom with the boys, and 
training them to a sense of community obliga- 
tion and service, not merely along religious 
but also along social lines, we are developing 
the leaders of the not distant future. 

When boys are brought together in ban- 
quets where good fellowship may become hi- 
larious but remains always clean and whole- 
some, they learn that social life can be jo- 
vial without being low. When they are set 
at work helping their fellows and contribut- 
ing in various lines to the betterment of the 
community, they are being trained for leader- 
ship both in town affairs and in the life of the 
church. This is a union movement, which 



i 4 a THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

brings the different denominations together; 
it is a practical movement because it constantly 
presents something definite which needs to be 
done; it is a movement full of promise be- 
cause it develops along the right lines pow- 
ers which will either make or mar the future 
of our country life. I believe that all pas- 
tors ought to study this movement, for it cer- 
tainly presents one of the most promising con- 
tributions toward the solution of our country 
problem. 

— Professor James McConaughy. 

LEADERS IN SOCIAL STUDY 

It seems to me that in some of our Con- 
necticut rural communities it might be a per- 
fectly feasible plan to institute social study 
classes. They should be formed with the 
object of studying carefully the social prob- 
lems of the rural community, with a view to 
putting into operation some definite program 
of work which would directly or indirectly 
profit the whole of that community. The 
greatest need of these classes will be that of 
competent leadership. Possibly the Associa- 
tion may be able to furnish trained men in 



LEADERSHIP 143 

this department who would make competent 
organizers and teachers until the local or- 
ganization is able to conduct its study alone. 
But the work at its inauguration needs a spe- 
cialist. 

The need of social study classes is in pro- 
portion to the need of community improve- 
ment. Many country villages are divided 
up into ecclesiastical fragments which are 
difficult to unite, but if a real interest is taken 
in social regeneration of the place, the whole 
community becomes partaker of the benefit. 

Such social improvement as we are working 
toward requires for its success the united im- 
pulse and inspiration of the entire Christian 
community, and if it should be fortunate 
enough to secure this, it may draw the people 
in our towns closer together in thought and 
action, and raise in them a healthy social and 
moral ambition. 

— Rev. A. T. Gesner. 



VIII 

A GENERAL REVIEW 

The fact that the chief subject of discus- 
sion is, " The Country Church," indicates 
what has been confirmed by the various con- 
tributions that the Church is recognized as 
the dominant factor in the problem of the 
rural community. On the other hand, the 
fact that the discussion has been brought 
about under the auspices of a specific depart- 
ment of the Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tion indicates that the Church for some reason 
has not adequately fulfilled this function, a 
fact so frankly conceded by most of the 
writers. It should be stated, however, at the 
outset, that while some justly keen criticisms 
of the Church's methods (or lack of methods) 
in this field have been presented, yet on the 
whole there is manifest a sincere desire to 
help the Church to master its problem in the 
rural districts. 

Again we may affirm that a great deal has 
144 



A GENERAL REVIEW 145 

been accomplished in the way of finding out 
what the problem of the country church is. 
I will restate the points briefly. 

1. The needs of the rural districts are 
pretty well classified as economic, social and 
religious; yet these should be more clearly 
defined by workers who are capable of making 
rural community surveys and securing accur- 
ate scientific information so that the country 
ministers and other workers will know what 
is best to do in any given case. The preced- 
ing chapters show that a good beginning has 
been made in this direction. 

2. The problem of leadership in the rural 
church and how it should be trained has been 
pretty clearly stated. While perhaps seven- 
tenths of the ministerial students in our theo- 
logical seminaries are from the rural districts, 
yet it is a fact that few of them take up the 
country pastorate as a definite life work. 
Therefore it seems absolutely necessary that 
the Church, as a whole, radically change its 
policy of training leadership for the country 
problem. Three ideas have been suggested. 
(1.) The agricultural colleges, in some 
cases, could easily and with profit give courses 



i 4 6 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

directly relating men to church leadership in 
the country parishes. ( 2. ) The theological 
seminaries should give courses in rural so- 
ciology and practical church polity in these 
fields. (3.) The strong men now manning 
the county work of the Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association could be ordained to per- 
form the functions of a minister in certain 
cases, or be promoted to the leadership of the 
country parish, using the county work de- 
partment as a training school for this field. 

3. Another advance made by this discus- 
sion is in more clearly defining the factors of 
community building in the rural districts and 
the function of each in the process. Those 
factors are : the colleges of agriculture, the 
federated church, the grange, the farmers' in- 
stitutes, the consolidated, socialized district 
school, and the country Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association. 

While these community factors, at times 
and in places, show group rivalry and pro- 
duce social friction, yet they may all, un- 
der statesmanlike leadership by the Church, 
be coordinated into a movement for com- 
munity solidarity that will master many of 



A GENERAL REVIEW 147 

the difficulties, economic and social, which 
now often seem to the isolated worker in- 
surmountable. 

4. Through the entire discussion sounds 
a note of optimism, due to the facts of 
achievement already made in this field. 
Among the participants are men who have 
made country parishes distinguished by their 
splendid leadership. These are the men who 
see with broad vision the national, racial, 
and as one has put it, the cosmical phases of 
the rural problem the Church is facing, and 
there is reason for the hope that the Church 
will soon be adequately at work in this most 
difficult yet most fruitful field. To this end 
it seems to me that we should make a special 
appeal for strong men to volunteer for coun- 
try work as we do for any other difficult field 
of strategic importance in building up the 
Empire of Jesus Christ; and also we should 
appeal to the Home Mission Boards of the 
various denominations of the Church to make 
provision for the support of these men in this 
difficult field, until they can develop adequate 
self-support in their respective country 



i 4 8 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

parishes, which should be real social centers 
of service. 

— Professor Edwin L. Earp. 



LIST OF DELEGATES TO THE COUNTRY 
CHURCH CONFERENCE, HELD UNDER THE 
AUSPICES OF THE COUNTRY WORK DE- 
PARTMENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL 
COMMITTEE OF YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN 
ASSOCIATIONS, NEW YORK, 1911. 

S. A. ACKLEY, State Secretary of the Young Men's Christian 
Associations of Virginia. 

WILLIAM B. ADAMS. 

E. L. ALLEN, County Secretary Young Men's Christian As- 
sociations of Westchester County, N. Y. 

MISS MARY L. ALLEN, Secretary of the National Board of 
the Young Women's Christian Association. 

DR. WILLIAM H. ALLISON, Dean Colgate Theological Sem- 
inary. 

REV. W. L. ANDERSON, Pastor of the First Congregational 
Church of Amherst, Mass. 

REV. R. H. M. AUGUSTINE, Pastor Hanover (N. J.) Pres- 
byterian Church. 

MRS. R. H. M. AUGUSTINE. 

W. B. BAILEY, Assistant Professor Political Economy of 
Yale University and Instructor in Sociology of Yale 
Divinity School. 

WILLIAM H. BAXLEY, County Secretary Young Men's 
Christian Associations of Westchester County, N. Y. 

WILLIAM S. BENNETT. 

REV. WILLIAM R. BLACKE. Village Preacher. 

JOHN R. BOARDMAN. New York representative of Goodwill 
Farm. 

REV. W. T. BOULT, Rural Preacher. 

.DR. CHARLES H. BOYNTON, Professor of Homiletics and 
Pedagogy, General Theological Seminary. 

H. S. BRAUCHER, Playground and Recreation Association of 
America. 

FRANK L. BROWN, Secretary International Sunday School 
Association. 

W. W. BRUNDAGE, County Secretary of the Young Men's 
Christian Associations of Dutchess Countv, N. Y. 

DR. K. L. BUTTERFIELD, President Massachusetts Agricul- 
tural College. 

DR. ELMER E. BROWN, Chancellor New York University. 

JOHN C. CAMPBELL, Russell Sage Foundation. 

MRS. JOHN C. CAMPBELL. 

W. J. CAMPBELL, State County Work Secretary ^ of the 
Young Men's Christian Association of Pennsylvania. 

REV. EDWARD M. CHAPMAN, Rural Preacher. 

DANIEL CHASE, County Secretary Young Men's Christian 
Associations of Eastern Delaware County, N. Y. 

REV. W. B. CHASE, Rural Preacher. 

149 



150 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

REV. A. S. CLAYTON, Gardnertown, N. Y. 

REV. W. RUSSELL COLLINS, D.D., Professor of Liturgies 
and Ecclesiastical Polity, Theological Seminary of the 
Reformed Episcopal Church, Philadelphia. 

MRS. J. H. CRANE. 

MISS MABEL CRATTY, Secretary National Board of the 
Young Women's Christian Association. 

REV. F. M. CROUCH, Field Secretary Joint Commission on 
Social Service of the Protestant Episcopal Church. 

REV. GEORGE STANLEY DAVIS, Village Preacher. 

D. C. DREW, State County Work Secretary of the Young 
Men's Christian Associations of Massachusetts. 

REV. W. A. DUMONT, Pastor First Reformed Church of 
West Coxsackie, N. Y. 

MRS. W. A. DUMONT. 

PROFESSOR EDWIN L. EARP, Ph.D., Director Drew Theo- 
logical Seminary. 

LEWIS F. EATON, President Polytechnic Institute, Billings, 
Mont. 

MRS. H. H. FARNUM. 

PROFESSOR G. WALTER FISKE, Junior Dean, Oberlin Theo- 
logical Seminary. 

A. W. FISMER, Ph.D., Professor of Practical Theology Ger- 
man Theological Seminary. 

REV. FRED E. FOERTNER, Pastor Reformed Church of 
Pompton Plains, N. J. 

REV. G. C. FOLEY, D.D., Professor Homiletics and Pastoral 
Care, Philadelphia Divinity School. 

FRED B. FREEMAN, State County Work Secretary of the 
Young Men's Christian Association of New Hampshire. 

C. A. GAMMONS, County Secretary Young Men's Christian 
Association of Western Delaware County, N. Y. 

PROFESSOR CURTIS M. GEER, Ph.D., Professor Hartford 
Theological Seminary. 

REV. A. P. GESNER, Professor Berkeley Divinity School. 

REV. C. O. GILL, Rural Preacher. 

REV. JAMES P. GILLESPIE, Yorktown, N. Y. 

JOH.N M. GLENN, Russell Sage Foundation. 

GUY D. GOLD, County Secretary Young Men's Christian As- 
sociations of Rockland County, N. Y. 

I. L. C. GOODING. 

RALPH C. GOODWIN, General Secretary, South Bend, (Ind.), 
Young Men's Christian Association. 

DR. W. A. GRANGER, President State Baptist Convention. 

JOHN HAMILTON, Chief of Division of Farmers' Institutes 
United States Department of Agriculture. 

LEE F. HANMER, Russell Sage Foundation. 

C. L. HARDING, Chairman Interstate Committee of the Young 
Men's Christian Associations of Maryland and Delaware. 

C. C. HATFIELD, County Work Secretary International Com- 
mittee of Young Men's Christian Associations. 

HON. WILLET M. HAYS, Assistant Secretary United States 
Department of Agriculture. 

FRED M. HILL, State County Work Secretary of the Young 
Men's Christian Association of New York. 

DR. A. S. HOBART, Professor New Testament Interpreta- 
tions (English) Crozer Theological Seminary. 



LIST OF DELEGATES 151 

REV. JOSEPH HILLMAN HOLLISTER, Pastor First Presbyte- 
rian Church of Mount Vernon, N. Y. 

JOHN R. HOWARD, Jr. Secretary Thomas Thompson Trust. 

PROFESSOR W. D. HURD, Director Extension Work Massa- 
chusetts Agricultural College. 

JUSTUS C. HYDE, Russell Sage Foundation. 

HENRY ISRAEL, County Work Secretary International Com- 
mittee of Young Men's Christian Associations. 

REV. J. H. JENSEN, Rural Preacher. 

E. TAYLOR JUDD, County Secretary Young Men's Christian 

Associations of Monmouth County, N. J. 

WILLIAM C. LANGDON, Writer and Student of Pageantry. 

REV. C. A. McALPINE, Secretary of State Baptist Convention. 

PROFESSOR JAMES McCONAUGHY, Managing Editor Sun- 
day School World. 

REV. M. B. McNUTT, Pastor Dupage Presbyterian Church, 
Plainfield, 111. 

REV. JOHN MacMURRAY, Village Preacher. 

A. R. MANN, Secretary, Registrar and Professor of Agricul- 
tural Editing, New York State College of Agriculture. 

F. D. MAPHIS. 

REV. PAUL MARTIN, Registrar and Secretary, Princeton 
Theological Seminary. 

H. D. MAYDOLE, County Secretary Young Men's Christian 
Associations of Camden County, N. J. 

C. S. MENGES. 

REV. N. C. MILLIRON, Pastor of Church at Littleton, N. J. 

HON. ARTHUR C. MONAHAN, United States Bureau of 
Education. 

REV. J. N. MORRIS, Rural Preacher. 

WILLIAM G. MOORE, Chairman Camden County (N. J.), 
Committtee of the Young Men's Christian Association. 

J. S. MORAN, County Secretary Young Men's Christian As- 
sociations of Addison Countv, Vt. 

W. C. NEWTON, County Secretary Young Men's Christian As- 
sociations of Oneida County, N. Y. 

REV. S. R. M. OAKES, Rural Preacher. 

JOHN H. PATTERSON, President National Cash Register 
Company. 

C. H. PIPHER, County Secretary Young Men's Christian As- 
sociation of Morris County, N. J. 

FRANK H. POTTER, "The Outlook." 

GEORGE T. POWELL, Agricultural expert. 

REV. A. O. PRITCHARD, Westchester Congregational Church, 
Scarsdale N^ Y^ 

REV. E. T. F.' RANDOLPH, Rural Pastor. 

OTIS B. READ, County Secretary Young Men's Christian As- 
sociation of Burlington County, N. J. 

GEORGE A. REEDER, Secretary International Committee of 
Young Men's Christian Associations. 

ALBERT E. ROBERTS, County Work Secretary International 
Committee of Young Men's Christian Associations. 

WILLIAM W. ROCKWELL, Assistant Professor Union Theo- 
logical Seminary. 

E. W. ROSEVEAR. 

REV. E. J. RULIFFSON, Rural Preacher. 

DR. E. B. SANFORD, Corresponding Secretary Federal Coun- 
cil of the Churches of Christ in America. 



IS* THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

C. F. SAVAGE, County Secretary Young Men's Christian As- 
sociation of Lancaster County, Pa. 

REV. J. A. SCHEUERLE, Pastor Second Congregational 
Church, Hartford, Vt. 

MYRON T. SCUDDER, Director Froebel Collegiate and Normal 
Institute, N. Y. 

F. E. SHAPLEIGH, New York State Agricultural College, Cor- 
nell University. 

REV. W. B. SHEDDAN, Assistant Librarian Princeton Theo- 
logical Seminary. 

DR. F. C. SITTERLY, Professor Drew Theological Seminary. 

CLAUDE C. SMITH, Boys' Secretary New Bedford, Mass., 
Young Men's Christian Association. 

REV. FRANK A. SMITH, Pastor First Baptist Church, Had- 
donfield, N. J. 

RAYMOND SPARGO, Boys' Work Leader, Wharton, N. J. 

HARRY HEDLEY SMITH, County Secretary Young Men's 
Christian Association of Gloucester County, N. J. 

C. W. STETSON, County Secretary Young Men's Christian As- 
sociation of Western Greene County, N. Y. 

REV. N. W. STROUP, District Superintendent, The Country 
Church Commission, Cleveland District, Eastern Ohio 
Conference. 

CHARLES F. SWAN. 

H. S. SYLVESTER, "The Youths' Companion." 

MISS ANNA B. TAFT, Assistant Department of Church and 
Country Life of the Presbyterian Board of Home Mis- 
sions. 

REV. CHARLES TAYLOR, Pastor Congregational Church, 
Westport, Conn. 

REV. ALEXANDER THOMPSON, Pastor Presbyterian Church, 
Little Britain, Pa. 

ROBERT W. VEACH, Dean of Bible Teachers Training School 
and Professor of Religious Education. 

PROFESSOR ERNEST D. WAID, Assistant Director of Ex- 
tension Work Department, Massachusetts Agricultural 
College. 

REV. M. WALSH, Rural Preacher. 

H. B. WATSON, State Secretary Young Men's Christian As- 
sociations of New Hampshire. 

ROBERT WEIDEiNSALL, Secretary Emeritus International 
Committee Young Men's Christian Associations. 

REV. G. F. WELLS, Research Secretary Department of Chris- 
tian Sociology Bureau of Field Work, Drew Theological 
Seminary. 

JAMES E. WEST, Chief Scout Executive, Boy Scouts of 
America. 

J. B. WILBUR. 

FRED B. WILCOX. 

Z. L. WILCOX. County Secretary, Young Men's Christian As- 
sociations of Orange County, N. Y. 

DR. WARREN H. WILSON, Superintendent Department of 
Church and County Life Board of Home Missions of 
the Presbyterian Church. 

REV. A. C. WYCKOFF, Spring Valley, N. Y. 



JUL 10 1912 



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